Senator Daschle said the reason the ethanol bill didn't pass was that Republicans wanted the MTBE provision in the bill. But see this post entitled "Daschle's Bad Faith on Ethanol" about the April ethanol vote:
Daschle's working assumption when he offered his amendment was that the MTBE provisions were preventing passage of the energy bill. After Daschle's amendment was dropped however, Senator Domenici dropped a 2nd degree amendment in the form of the comprehensive energy package WITHOUT the MTBE provision, i.e. the reason Daschle stated the bill wouldn't pass. Since the Daschle amendment wasn't taken seriously--even the National Corn Growers were opposed--the real action was on Domenici's MTBE-less energy bill. It failed to receive the necessary 60 votes for cloture 55-43. Again, in November and in April Daschle blamed the failure of the energy bill on the MTBE provision and said he could get the bill passed without it. Again, Daschle's amendment was offered for political effect, as Senator McCain explained on the floor. Again, Daschle's statements about the MTBE provisions are false. And, again, none of this has been explained by the Argus Leader to the voters of South Dakota. If the Argus Leader wanted to provide substantive information to South Dakota voters, it could describe the acrana of the Senate to the voters. It would elevate the debate. And it would allow voters to understand what Daschle is doing in Washington all the time. Cloture, for example, isn't that complicated. Explaining it in the context of the obstructionist charges against Daschle would be very beneficial to voters.
The Argus Leader and others really need to explain this matter.
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