Delay on Energy Bill Vote Threatens Adjournment Plan

WASHINGTON — - WASHINGTON — The push by Congress to finish its work before the U.S. Thanksgiving encountered new turbulence recently when House leaders canceled business because a wide-ranging energy measure was not ready.

Republican negotiators said a few tax and policy issues remained unsettled, preventing them from making public a version of their energy proposal in time for a joint House-Senate conference committee vote and a possible following House consideration.

The decision to put off any votes in the House means that if Republican leaders intend to meet their adjournment date, the House and Senate will have to complete the energy bill, major Medicare legislation, more than a half-dozen contentious spending bills and assorted other measures.

"We've got a lot of laundry piling up," said one top Senate Republican aide.

For its part, the Senate became further entangled in partisan disputes on Monday. Senator Harry Reid of Nevada, the No. 2 Democrat in the Senate, spoke on the floor for more than eight and a half hours in protest of a Republican plan to devote 30 hours this week to debating Democratic filibusters that have stalled a handful of President Bush's nominees for the federal bench. The overnight session is to begin soon.

"This," Mr. Reid told the Senate, "is a one-man show to indicate that the Senate cannot necessarily be run unless we work together." Mr. Reid, 63, spent some of the time reading from a history he had written about his hometown in Nevada.

Republicans were already angry over complaints Mr. Reid and the Democratic leader, Tom Daschle, made last week that they were managing the Senate in an amateurish fashion. Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the No. 2 Republican in the Senate, accused Democrats of petulance on Monday and said the Republican majority had posted a better legislative record than Democrats had when they controlled the Senate last year.

"What's amateur, to use the Democratic leadership's terminology, is not doing your job and blaming someone else," Mr. McConnell said.

The energy negotiators had hoped to unveil their measure in early November after an impasse over tax incentives for ethanol was settled. But lawmakers and aides said smaller disputes remained over tax credits for the nuclear and coal industries and some local projects, including a tourism and education center in Iowa backed by Senator Charles E. Grassley, Republican of Iowa and a principal in the energy talks. Mr. Grassley, rebutting criticism from the House speaker, J. Dennis Hastert of Illinois, that the Iowa project was delaying the overall bill, said recently that the center was just one of five such initiatives in the measure. He said he would support eliminating all of them, but not just the Iowa project, as the House negotiators had suggested.

Lawmakers and aides said they believed that the remaining energy matters could still be disposed of and a bill ready for its possible deadline. Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham, in a speech at the National Press Club, reiterated his call for Congress to act before adjourning.

"We need to have a bill, and getting that bill, even if it's not perfect, through the finish line is our priority," Mr. Abraham said.