A draft climate and energy bill will be released after Congress returns from the upcoming two-week spring recess, Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass., said today. And Joe Lieberman, I/D-Conn., referencing the upcoming debate on financial regulatory reform, said the Senate probably won't get to a climate and energy bill until June.

Kerry told reporters that there is not a dilemma over whether Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., will decide to separately move an energy plan and one that puts a price on carbon emissions. "He has said repeatedly that we're going to do the combination of climate and energy," Kerry said. "I don't think he's ever varied from that." Kerry plans to meet with Reid this evening.

But Reid has been asked by Senate Energy and Natural Resources Chairman Jeff Bingaman, D-N.M., and Sen. Byron Dorgan, D-N.D., to first move an energy bill Bingaman's panel approved last year with support in both parties. Reid has said he will try to reach a compromise between Kerry and Bingaman on strategy. Reid is meeting Wednesday with committee chairs -- including Kerry and Bingaman -- with jurisdiction over a climate and energy plan to discuss a strategy. "I just want to see the bill when it's written," said Senate Finance Chairman Max Baucus, D-Mont. "I'd be foolhardy to get more specific."

Kerry said negotiations with "crucial" players will continue over the next couple of days, wherein he expects to "close in to some concepts." These concepts will be sent to EPA for modeling, which the agency has said would take at least six weeks. A draft bill would later be sent to CBO for an analysis that would not be expected to take as long as EPA's.

Several senators meeting with Kerry, Lieberman and Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., today will not leave with anything on paper, Lieberman said, because "we still want to work on it until it gets to legislative language, which will probably happen now over the recess."

A third meeting with industry and business groups the three senators had originally scheduled for today -- and where they were also going to present their latest outline -- has been pushed back to Thursday.

Several potential fence-sitters in both parties are not planning to attend today's briefing, including Maine Republican Sens. Susan Collins and Olympia Snowe, Claire McCaskill, D-Mo., Carl Levin, D-Mich., and Energy and Natural Resources top Republican Lisa Murkowski of Alaska. Sen. George Voinovich, R-Ohio, said it's "tentatively" on his schedule but did not confirm whether he was definitely going or not.

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