The House of Representatives - Congress - did approve an Energy Bill last Friday. Democrats narrowly pushed through a response to BP's massive oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico.

But while it contains the toughest reforms ever to offshore energy drilling practices, it does little to address climate change.

Why is it so tough for Obama to exert his authority and force through legislation on this crucial issue, particularly when states like California are behind him?

Senate majority leader Harry Reid blamed Republican senators who refused to support the bill because they didn't like any curbs on the oil industry, even though the Democrats dropped those parts of the bill that would have imposed caps on carbon emissions and set targets for renewable energy generation.

The final version of the bill instead focused on tackling risks associated with offshore oil drilling in the wake of the BP spill in the Gulf of Mexico.

It would have strengthened safety rules and removed the $75 million cap on damages currently enjoyed by offshore oil companies in the event of a spill.

The bill did retain measures to improve domestic energy efficiency, encourage the rollout of cleaner natural gas powered trucks, and help green job creation programmes.

But Republican senators wouldn't budge and even two Democrat senators from the oil-rich states of Louisiana and Alaska said they would vote against it.

"It's a sad day when you can't find a handful of Republicans to support a bill that would create up to 700,000 clean energy jobs, hold BP accountable, and look at a future as it relates to what BP did," Reid said.

Democrat senator John Kerry, slammed Republican leaders. "Ask anyone outside of Washington, and they'll tell you that this isn't a Democrat or a Republican issue, it's an American issue," he said.

"It's American troops whose lives are endangered because we're dependent on oil companies in countries that hate us. It's American consumers who are tired not just of prices at the pump that soar each summer, but sick and tired of our oil dependency that makes Iran $100 million richer every day that Washington fails to respond."

The move is the third major defeat for the Democrats' climate change agenda in two weeks, after Reid was forced to abandon both the plan for an emissions trading scheme and more modest proposals for a Renewable Energy Standard that would have required energy firms to generate a proportion of their energy from renewable sources.

The defeats are a major blow to the authority of President Obama and weaken the US position at the Bonn climate talks.

[pic caption] Senate majority leader Harry Reid