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• WASHINGTON (AP) -- A widely popular, bipartisan energy savings bill fell victim in the Senate on Monday to election-year politics and the Obama administration's continued indecision on the Keystone XL oil pipeline.
• A procedural motion to end debate and bring the measure to a floor vote without amendments fell five votes short of the 60 votes needed for approval.
• The legislation would tighten efficiency guidelines for new federal buildings and provide tax incentives to make homes and commercial buildings more efficient. It easily cleared a procedural hurdle last week but stalled after Republican demand for votes on the Canada-to-Texas pipeline and on new administration-proposed greenhouse gas limits for coal-burning power plants.
• Republicans are united in favor of the pipeline and against the new power plant regulations, while Democrats are deeply divided on both. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., used a parliamentary maneuver to block Senate votes on the pipeline and power plant rules as part of the energy savings bill.
• Reid said Monday that Republicans were "still seeking a ransom" on the energy bill by insisting on the Keystone amendment and other votes. He said he had agreed to a long-standing request from pipeline supporters for a separate vote on the pipeline if its supporters would let the efficiency bill sail through unamended.
• Minority Whip John Cornyn, R-Texas, called Reid's maneuver disappointing. "The Senate used to be a place of great debate and accomplishment. Now it is run like a dictatorship shutting out the voices of millions of Americans," he said.
• Election-year politics loomed on all sides.
• Democrats said Republicans were unwilling to hand a victory on the energy efficiency bill to Sen. Jeanne Shaheen, D-N.H., a co-author of the bill who is facing a re-election challenge from Republican Scott Brown, a former Massachusetts senator who now lives in New Hampshire. Republican Sen. Rob Portman of Ohio also co-authored the energy legislation.
• Shaheen and Portman both said they were disappointed at the defeat of a plan they said would create almost 200,000 jobs, reduce pollution and save taxpayers billions of dollars.
• "People in New Hampshire and across the country lost out today because of election-year politics," Shaheen said, while Portman called the vote "a disappointing example of Washington's dysfunction."
• Partisan discord was so strong that three Republican senators who co-sponsored the energy legislation voted against it Monday to protest the exclusion of

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