Here we go again. James Inhofe, the most prominent climate change denier in the United States Senate, has concocted a new and innovative strategy to thwart the Clean Energy Jobs and American Power Act. To wit, he and his Republican colleagues on the Environment and Public Works Committee have worked up a plan to simply not show up for next week’s markup:

But Boxer cannot hold the markup unless at least two Republicans show up, and EPW ranking member James Inhofe (R-Okla.) signaled that he has unanimous support among the panel’s minority members to boycott the session until they get more data on the legislation from U.S. EPA and the Congressional Budget Office.

Inhofe said he will wait for Boxer to file an official notice of the markup — expected today — before responding with his own declaration of the GOP’s markup strategy.

“As soon as we find out what her announcement is and what she wants to do, we’ll have our response,” Inhofe told E&E last night. “We’ll have our unanimous expression ready.”

Sadly, this is a continuation of the GOP’s longstanding strategy of delaying clean energy legislation:

• As Chairman Markey shepherded his American Clean Energy and Security Act through the House Energy and Commerce Committee, Republicans employed multiple parliamentary tricks to — as Politico put it — “nitpick the bill into legislative oblivion.” Brian Beutler called these nefarious stall tactics, and noted that Democrats responded by hiring a speed reader.
• Last year during the debate over the Climate Security Act, Minority Leader Mitch McConnell demanded that the entire 491 page bill be read on the floor of the United States Senate. A strategy memo was leaked at the time detailing the Republican strategy for delaying the bill as much as humanly possible.

While this Republican obstructionism is not necessarily surprising, it is especially egregious this time. Here are a few things about this episode that struck me:

1. Despite the fact that Senator Inhofe has been working to orchestrate this obstruction for a week now, Republicans are pretending the effort is being led by the two moderate Republicans on the committee. Politico handled the stenography:

The boycott effort is being led by the two most moderate Republican members on the committee: Sens. George Voinovich of Ohio and Lamar Alexander of Tennessee.

This is absolutely not true. Voinovich and Alexander have both indicated a willingness to lend bipartisan support to the legislation. Their statements in support of Inhofe’s obstruction are an indication that they are showing deference to the ranking member on the committee, nothing more. Again, this thing has Inhofe written all over it.

2. Senator Inhofe, of course, will never support the bill regardless of any economic modeling the EPA does. He does not even believe that humans are responsible for climate change. In his opposition to health care legislation he was at least honest enough to say so up front, telling a town hall in August, “I don’t have to read it, or know what’s in it. I’m going to oppose it anyways.” The same is true of the Kerry-Boxer clean energy bill: Inhofe has no intention of learning anything about it or voting for it. His only intention is to gum up the works and delay delay delay.

3. As Senator Boxer has pointed out, Inhofe’s reason for concern here is absurd:

“This is the longest study there is,” she said, noting that it included a two-week review of the Senate proposal, as well as the findings from a five-week review that the agency took this spring to analyze H.R. 2454, the House-passed climate bill. Combined, Boxer said the two bills are 90 percent similar, leaving little reason to dive deeper before the markup. “We’re not going to waste taxpayer money because someone drew a line in the sand,” she said.

Senator Whitehouse called this exactly what it is, theatrics.

This is nothing more than a shameless attempt to obstruct and delay clean energy legislation. Both on the EPW Committee, and in the full Senate, the numbers are on the side of passage. Senator Inhofe knows this, so he is throwing one last hail-mary in an attempt to stall the process. I don’t expect better from him, but it is still pretty pathetic.

Update — David Roberts at Grist:

The danger here is not so much that Inhofe can block markup, but he can make the entire process so toxic that any hope of Republican support is lost—and the bill won’t pass without some Republican support.

So it’s classic Inhofe: a petty procedural ratf*ck designed to poison the waters and prevent and reasonable engagement with the issues at hand.

This is old, but important.

Carl Pope:

The Senate is supposed to be debating global warming — the bill on the floor is the Lieberman-Warner Climate Security Act. But yesterday the Senate Minority Leader, Mitch McConnell, refused to allow the Senate to debate the 491-page bill, demanding instead that the clerk READ IT OUT LOUD — a process that took NINE hours.

McConnell did not claim that members of the Senate were illiterate — he said he was just pissed off that the Democrats weren’t approving President Bush’s judicial nominees. (Can McConnell spell infantile?) But evidently it’s not really judges that got under McConnell’s skin. Last night Majority Leader Harry Reid read a much shorter (and more interesting) document out loud to the Senate — it was a leaked copy of a Republican leadership-strategy memo explaining that they had no intention of seriously legislating about climate change, but intended to use the floor time to score political points at the expense of the Democrats. The memo gleefully looked forward to a whole series of votes in which advocates of cleaning up global warming would be portrayed as plotting $8/gallon gasoline prices.

Several political dynamics are running immediately beneath the surface of news coverage of the swine flu outbreak. First and foremost, the confirmation of Kathleen Sebelius as Health and Human Services Secretary is being held up by GOP Senators because she is – GASP – pro-choice. More importantly, a growing chorus of bloggers and Mexican media outlets are pointing to an American-based company, Smithfield, as 50% owner of the Mexican farm where the swine flu is believed to have originated.

Sebelius Confirmation as Health and Human Services Secretary

This story will receive significant attention today as the Senate prepares to vote sometime in the afternoon or evening. Joe Sudbay has the text of the unanimous consent agreement, which indicates that we could see a vote by 6pm today. Sudbay’s critique of the GOP obstructionism on this is a thing of beauty. SEIU has a petition running and I’m assuming that won’t be all we’ll hear from them on this. Greg Sargent has a bit of a back and forth between spokespeople for Senators Reid and McConnell, and his conclusion hits the mark: “The filibuster over an abortion controversy is still throwing a hurdle in the way of this nomination, despite the flu epidemic.”

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