On May 5, a coalition of businesses, construction companies, environmental organizations, investors, labor, nongovernmental organizations, states, trade associations and other wrote a letter to Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV), Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY), House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) and House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-OH) urging them to do everything possible to "ensure prompt enactment, with significant bipartisan support, of extensions of federal tax incentives that promote renewable energy and energy efficiency technologies." The letter argues that failing to extend the tax incentives puts more than 116,000 jobs at risk in the wind and solar technology sectors as well as more than $19 billion in clean energy investment.
On April 23, forty-one Republican Senators sent a letter to the Chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, Max Baucus (D-MT), declaring their support for extension of various expiring tax provisions, including energy tax incentives, the research and experimentation tax credit, various accelerated depreciation provisions, the education, charitable and other individual incentives and the 2008 Alternative Minimum Tax (AMT) "patch," without offsetting tax increases.
The question over how and whether to "pay" for extensions of expiring energy tax incentives has resulted in a virtual stalemate in Congress. Extending these incentives without any tax increases would be a departure from the "pay-as-you-go" rules that Democrats have been following since becoming the majority party following the 2006 elections; House Democratic leadership is insistent upon them, while Senate Democratic leadership seems to be willing to make exceptions.
In the letter, the Senators note that several energy tax incentive provisions have already been extended this year, without offsetting tax increases, and these provisions and the others mentioned should be extended in the same way. They are referring to an amendment that was successfully inserted into the recently passed housing bill by Sens. Maria Cantwell (D-WA) and John Ensign (R-NV) that provides a one-year extension for the production tax credit (PTC), investment tax credit (ITC) and an additional $400 million in allocation authorization for Clean Renewable Energy Bonds (CREBs), among others.