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.
James Inhofe (R-OK) appeared briefly today at a climate bill markup in the Senate Environment and Public Works committee, simply to drop off a letter with a series of Republican demands on how to move forward on the bill. The letter basically asks the EPA for a “full assessment” of the Senate bill, including modeling that they are probably not even equipped to do. It’s just a stall tactic, and Democrats treated it as such.
Senator Voinovich sent the following to his online newsletter on September 30th 2009:
Recently, Sen. Voinovich delivered remarks at the Managing Ohio’s Energy Future Climate Change Conference to discuss Ohio’s vital role in the national climate change debate. As a member of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee (EPW) and the Clean Air and Nuclear Safety Subcommittee, Sen. Voinovich has been at the forefront of the debate on climate change. He is committed to harmonizing our environmental, energy and economic needs, though he does not believe this should be done on the backs of working families. His vote against the Lieberman-Boxer climate bill last year helped save hundreds of thousands of Ohio jobs and protect Ohio seniors and families from sky-rocketing natural gas, electricity and gasoline costs. Sen. Voinovich believes the smart way to go about addressing this problem isn’t through unilateral actions that hurt our economy and drive jobs overseas. Americans are already struggling with increases in their cost of living due to higher prices for gasoline, home heating fuel, electricity, food and health care. Climate change must be addressed in a bipartisan way – it must incentivize the clean energy technologies we need now and in the future. Only through a collaborative, multinational effort can we develop and deploy the clean energy technologies necessary to solve this global problem.
