Paying The Price: GOP Accuses Dems Of Buying Global Warming Votes
Oct 2, 2009 Comments Off Erik Wong
Senate Democrats appear ready to follow the House playbook for passing contentious global warming legislation by trading pollution allowances for votes. But even with the aide of this tactic, the bill is unlikely to pass this year.
The draft legislation circulated by Sens. Barbara Boxer, D-Calif., and John Kerry, D-Mass., includes a requirement for steep emissions cuts, but does not stipulate how emission allowances will be allocated. Instead, those details will be filled in as Democratic Senate leaders work to strike deals with their moderate faction, many of whom are reluctant to support a “cap and trade” system, particularly while the jobless rate continues to climb.
House Democratic leaders successfully used this negotiation strategy earlier this year to narrowly pass their own cap and trade bill, winning votes in exchange for free allowances for manufacturing and coal plants as well as oil refineries.
Senate Democrats have so far given the global warming bill a lukewarm reception.
Sens. Jay Rockerfeller, of West Virginia and Tom Carper, of Delaware, told The Examiner the bill’s requirement of a 20 percent reduction rate in emissions is too high and should reflect the 6 percent reduction experts say has occurred as a result of the economic downturn. “Fourteen percent is closer,” Rockerfeller said, signaling the emissions cut he would support.
Carper, who also wants the bill to provide incentives for clean-coal plants, said the Boxer-Kerry bill “is not the end, it is the beginning of the process,” and would have to be modified to win his support.
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., said he wants to try to pass a global warming and energy reform bill by the end of the year.
“This is an opportunity for Boxer and Reid to use all of those allocations to buy votes,” said Matt Dempsey, spokesman for Sen. James Inhofe, of Oklahoma, the top Republican on the panel that will draft the bill.
Inhofe sent a letter Tuesday to Boxer, the committee chair, calling for “a fair, open, and transparent process so we can have a debate on the facts and the substance of legislation with all its provisions, no matter how politically sensitive they may be.”
Republicans concede Boxer will likely be successful in passing the global warming bill out of her committee before December, when President Obama heads back to Copenhagen for a climate change summit.
But Senate passage is very much uncertain, with many moderate Democrats, including Sens. Ben Nelson, of Nebraska and Mary Landrieu, of Louisiana, simply unwilling to support a cap and trade policy
The bill must also clear the Senate Agriculture Committee, chaired by Sen. Blanche Lincoln, D-Ark., who told the National Cattlemen’s Beef Association earlier this month that she is opposed to the cap and trade legislation passed by the House.
“It is a deeply flawed bill, and I will not support similar legislation in the Senate,” she said.
Passing a global warming bill in the Senate this year, Lincoln said Wednesday is “going to be tough. Real tough.”
