Most of these folks were never going to seriously consider voting for a worthwhile bill in the first place. I’m glad they’ve now identified their excuse for inaction so we can stop including them in policy negotiations.
“It makes it hard to do anything because of the way this was handled,” said Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.).
Graham didn’t elaborate, but he didn’t have to — the fierce partisan fights during the past few weeks have torn away at the Senate’s clubby decorum, raising temperatures, fraying nerves and creating what one Democratic senator has called a “very high” level of distrust among members.
Graham’s words carry serious weight with supporters of climate change legislation because the South Carolina Republican has emerged as a leader on the issue in the Senate, working with Sens. John Kerry (D-Mass.) and Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.) on a bipartisan bill.
Other potentially “gettable” Republican senators also sounded discouraging notes Monday.
“Right now, I would say that cap and trade is stalled,” said Maine Sen. Susan Collins.
“Cap and trade has been delayed by the health care debate almost indefinitely,” said Indiana Sen. Dick Lugar. “The question will be how many more battles members of Congress want to take on in an election year.”
“I give it a very low chance,” said Alaska Sen. Lisa Murkowski, a potential GOP target for bill supporters. “What it comes down to is our ability to work together as a body. And right now, the indicators are not very positive for climate change.”
Statement from Senator Murkowski’s office via email.
U.S. Sen. Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska, today released the following statement regarding Sens. Maria Cantwell and Susan Collins’ Carbon Limits and Energy for America’s Renewal (CLEAR) Act:
“I am encouraged by Sen. Cantwell’s bipartisan effort to advance a more sensible approach to greenhouse gas emission reductions. A great deal of work remains to find consensus on legislation, and ensure that both the economy and the environment are protected, but this bill is intellectually honest and moves the debate in the right direction,” Murkowski said. “We need to keep all of our climate policy options on the table, and the CLEAR Act should certainly be one of the approaches we spend time considering in the coming months.”
“As this debate proceeds, it’s essential that we not only discuss the merits of different proposals, but what may be missing from them as well,” Murkowski said. “None of the legislation introduced so far contains adequate preemption of harmful EPA regulations, and we must explore the implications of limiting market participation since doing so could subject regulated entities to significant price uncertainty.”
Rather than the voluminous “cap and trade” bills approved earlier by the House and the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, Cantwell’s bill runs less than 40 pages and has a significantly different approach. Groups and companies ranging from ExxonMobil to Friends of the Earth have shown an interest in her bill.
Cantwell’s measure, as opposed to other bills, has bipartisan support; Maine Republican Sen. Susan Collins is an original co-sponsor. Republicans have branded previous Democratic bills “cap and tax” bills, warning they would result in high energy prices for consumers.
“The general public knows you have to make a transition and this will help them,” Cantwell said of her measure.
Cantwell’s approach is called “cap and rebate” or “cap and dividend.”
Senator Cantwell’s office has provided the following documents.
The basic idea is that some Senators are reluctant to vote on the clean energy jobs bill — even in committee — without full economic modeling of the legislation.
Since 2001, the Senate has debated at least eight energy or global warming bills where there was no analysis by EPA, Congressional Budget Office or the Energy Information Administration completed in advance of Committee deliberations. In several cases, there was no full analysis before the bill was voted on by the entire Senate:
– Energy Policy Act of 2002 (H.R. 4): EIA and CBO analysis conducted after both committee passage and full Senate consideration.
– Climate Stewardship Act of 2003 (S. 139): EIA analysis conducted before full Senate consideration. No committee consideration.
– Energy Policy Act of 2003 (H.R. 4/S. 1005): EIA and CBO analysis conducted after committee passage. Limited CBO analysis completed before full Senate consideration, EIA analysis after.
– Climate Stewardship Act of 2005 (S. 342): No analysis conducted before full Senate consideration. No committee consideration.
– Energy Policy Act of 2005 (S. 10): CBO analysis completed after committee passage, before full Senate consideration.
– Energy Savings Act of 2007 (S. 1321): CBO analysis completed after committee passage, before full Senate consideration.
– America’s Climate Security Act of 2007 (S. 2191): EIA and EPA analysis completed after committee passage, before full Senate consideration.
– American Clean Energy Leadership Act of 2009 (S. 1462): CBO analysis completed after committee passage.
Not that this will stop them, but it is nice to have such irrefutable evidence anyway.
What is important is both the public appearance by Graham and the emergence of Lieberman as the third wingman. In his remarks, Graham seemed to distance himself from the Republicans on the Environment and Public Works Committee that are boycotting the markup of the Kerry-Boxer bill.”If you can’t participate in solving the problem, then why are you up here?” said Graham.
But later in the day he sided with EPW’s Republican rebels. In a letter to EPA administrator Lisa Jackson, Graham joined with Judd Gregg of New Hampshire and Olympia Snowe and Susan Collins of Maine—all seen as potential “yes” votes—to endorse the call for further EPA analysis. “As Senators interested in a bipartisan approach to addressing climate change and energy independence this Congress, we have a keen interest in ensuring that cost estimates, models, and other data critical to the legislative process be made available to members of Congress and the public in a timely manner,” they wrote. “We cannot support legislation without this information.”
Here is the letter, which was from Senators Graham, Collins, Snowe and Gregg:
