Climate Bill Faces Hurdles in Senate

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1. Cap and Trade faces extinction in the Senate.

2. With democrat defections predetermined (Baucus, Lincoln, Dorgan, Byrd, Ben Nelson, Landrieu, Brown), Ms Boxer requires considerable Republican endorsement to have a prayer.

3. Yet, the California doctrinaire is conducting her committee (EPW) with so heavy a hand she has succeeded in precipitating ALL SEVEN of her Republican members to BOYCOTT her markup.

4. Cap and Trade, meanwhile, CANNOT pass without significant GOP backing.

5. Indeed, Senators Kerry and Lindsey Graham have been lobbying bipartisanly to broker a bill backbenchers can bless.

6. But Ms Boxer does her best to betray their labors.

7. Mr Reid, meanwhile, needs red support.

8. Head-counting whip Dick Durbin has conceded, concerning cap and trade: "it's a difficult schedule," with many members already "anxious" about health care.

9. Ben Nelson: "we have enough on our plate right now, it's questionable to open another front."

10. Sharrod Brown: "there's no bill," unless domestic manufactures are protected against foreign competition less green.

11. The Ohio dem adds: "we're not real close."

12. Blanche Lincoln, chair of Ag, on behalf of farmers: cap and trade is "a heavy lift" to get done this year.

U.S. Senate Democrats skeptical about climate bill | Markets | Reuters

13. Robert Byrd, from coal-rich West Virginia: "I cannot support the house bill in its present form."

http://www.news-register.net/page/content.detail/id/525852.html

14. The White House itself is equivocal---David Axelrod on September 1 announced the administration's "deprioritizing" of the issue.

15. Regulatory reform of Wall Street is now considered a higher priority than cap and trade, bared Obama's Brain.

Under fire, President Obama shifts strategy - Mike Allen and Jim VandeHei - POLITICO.com

16. Having established the hopelessness of passing the piece along purely party lines, it is clear that signficant GOP garnering is necessary.

17. Thus, Kerry's cooperation with Graham.

18. But the famously flippant South Carolinian is insisting on nuclear power plants and offshore drilling in exchange.

19. In other words, forget about it.

20. Graham: "there is nowhere near 60 votes for a nuclear power bill on its own, there's not 60 votes for a cap and trade bill as its currently constructed."

21. Jilting Joe Lieberman, meanwhile, leads a bipartisan 17 also insisting on nuclear energy.

22. So George Voinovich and Lamar Alexander, noted centrists, broach their boycott of Boxer.

Senate panel faces partisan climate war - Lisa Lerer - POLITICO.com

23. Voinovich: "I'm willing to work with the people on the other side, but if you jam this thing through here it's not going to be good."

24. Customary rules prohibit a chairwoman from marking up legislation without the presence of two members of the minority, but Boxer bids to bully through.

25. "The senator is going to use all the tools at her disposal," avows an aid.

26. Republicans targeted by leadership---Lisa Murkowski, Judd Gregg, Dick Lugar, Susan Collins, Omnipresent Olympia and Maverick McCain.

27. But Graham is the only one glad handing.

28. And HE needs nukes, also offshore oil.

29. McCain, game-playing greenie, can't come along unless he sees greater guarantees for fission.

30. But Kerry, according to the Arizona oddball, is "not ready to do that."

31. Ben Nelson, today: cap and trade cannot pass senate this congress.

All GOP senators to boycott climate hearing - Lisa Lerer - POLITICO.com

32. "I haven't been able to sell that argument to my farmers, and I don't think they're going to buy it from anyone else," noted the Nebraskan.

33. The six top Republicans on committees concerned (Murkowski, Chambliss, Grassley, Lugar, Inhofe and Kay Baily Hutchinson)---not to be confused with the half dozen dissenters declared to join Voinovich's boycott of Boxer---scribbled a bulletin to bullheaded Boxer today, calling for EPA analysis of the effects of the legislation.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/politics/documents/boycott.pdf

34. "We are deeply troubled by the failure to accomodate a request from Senator Voinovich and other Republicans for a complete analysis of the bill's projected impacts on the nation," asserted the six in their meaningful missive.

35. "From our viewpoint such an approach would severely damage, rather than help, the chances of enacting changes to our nation's climate and energy policies," continued cap and trade's killers.

36. "Analyses are worth the time and resources, not only to get them done, but to get them done right," concluded the recalcitrant reps.

37. Boxer's bluffing, she's gonna have to back off.

38. The bill is stillborn.

39. Any piece that passes lower parliament by four piddly votes has no hope on the upper floor---Politics 101.

40. All this trading of "carbon credits" is gammon worthy of gagster Al Gore.

41. Cap and trade contemplates massive tax increases on energy---both production and consumption---in the midst of economic Depression.

42. As such, it's political AND economic suicide.

The climate-change bill that has been moving slowly through the Senate will face a stark political reality when it emerges for committee debate on Tuesday: With Democrats deeply divided on the issue, unless some Republican lawmakers risk the backlash for signing on to the legislation, there is almost no hope for passage.

Like the measure adopted by the House, the legislation favors a cap-and-trade system that would issue permits for greenhouse gas emissions, gradually lower the amount of emissions allowed, and let companies buy and sell permits to meet their needs -- all without adding to the federal deficit, according to projections. But key Republicans are making their opposition clear, even as Sen. John F. Kerry (D-Mass.) has enlisted Sen. Lindsey O. Graham (S.C.) as his most visible GOP ally in gathering support for the bill.

Sen. George V. Voinovich (Ohio), a member of the Environment and Public Works Committee who was initially seen as one of the few Republicans who might consider backing the majority, is helping lead the opposition.

"Why are we trying to jam down this legislation now?" he asked during a hearing last week. "Wouldn't it be smarter to take our time and do it right?"

He wrote Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lisa P. Jackson twice this summer to ask for a more detailed economic analysis of the House-passed climate legislation, and he has joined the other six Republicans on the committee in boycotting the climate bill's markup, scheduled for Tuesday.

The measure has deeply divided Democrats. With states in the Midwest, South and Rocky Mountain West dependent on fossil fuels for energy, many senators are worried about the legislation's impact on industry and consumers.

"I think at the end of the day, the people who turn the switch on at home will be disadvantaged," Sen. Ben Nelson (D-Neb.) told CNBC on Friday, explaining why he did not think the bill Kerry had sponsored along with Environment and Public Works Chairman Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) could pass.

So Democratic leaders, with the support of the Obama administration, are trying to sway at least half a dozen Republicans by offering amendments to speed along their top priority: building nuclear power plants.

Graham has suggested provisions on nuclear power and offshore oil drilling that could win his support for a cap-and-trade climate bill. Sen. Joseph I. Lieberman (I-Conn.) has established a bipartisan working group of 17 Senate offices that is close to producing a detailed amendment aimed at hurrying the construction of U.S. nuclear reactors.

But it remains unclear whether that approach will hold currency in the current era of political polarization. One of the top Republicans whom Democrats hope to recruit in this effort -- Sen. Lisa Murkowski (Alaska), whom Graham and Kerry recently buttonholed on the Senate floor -- has voiced skepticism about the legislation.

"A tepid nuclear title isn't enough to get her to support a bad climate bill," said Robert Dillon, a spokesman for Murkowski.

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washingtonpost.com


The Prof

Simply put if this passes it will be the first time Obama told the truth.
"Under My Plan...Electricity Rates Would Necessarily Skyrocket" - Google Videos

Again simply put if this idiocy passes it will raise the price of every product and service in this country every thing without exception. This along with the "I don't care about your Health Plan" will kill our economy dead as hell and it may never recover without a real revolution no one wants. I have warned and warned that we have to stop both of these fully ANTI-American plans.

This bill and any other incarnates of it need to die and stay dead. All of our energy costs will skyrocket.

Councilman said:

Simply put if this passes it will be the first time Obama told the truth.
"Under My Plan...Electricity Rates Would Necessarily Skyrocket" - Google Videos

Again simply put if this idiocy passes it will raise the price of every product and service in this country every thing without exception. This along with the "I don't care about your Health Plan" will kill our economy dead as hell and it may never recover without a real revolution no one wants. I have warned and warned that we have to stop both of these fully ANTI-American plans.

Click to expand...

That feeble argument has already been debunked.

thank you for trying...:2wave:

obama's own words to the sf chron, jan 08:

Let me sort of describe my overall policy.

What I've said is that we would put a cap and trade system in place that is as aggressive, if not more aggressive, than anybody else's out there.

I was the first to call for a 100% auction on the cap and trade system, which means that every unit of carbon or greenhouse gases emitted would be charged to the polluter. That will create a market in which whatever technologies are out there that are being presented, whatever power plants that are being built, that they would have to meet the rigors of that market and the ratcheted down caps that are being placed, imposed every year.

So if somebody wants to build a coal-powered plant, they can; it's just that it will bankrupt them because they're going to be charged a huge sum for all that greenhouse gas that's being emitted.

Click to expand...

http://newsbusters.org/blogs/p-j-gl...s-sf-chronicle-he-will-bankrupt-coal-industry

cap and trade is dead

mature observers knew it had no future when the palsied speakeress shrieked at the topmost register of her earspliting shrill, "VOTE FOR JOBS! JOBS! JOBS! JOBS!"

only to see THE GLOBAL WARMING PROTECTION ACT (LOL!) pass LOWER house by a meager measure of 4

global warming = jobs

LOL!

four votes

cap and trade is kaput, ask lincoln, landrieu, nelson, brown, byrd...

ask axelrod

ask the whip

ask the post

put it this way---the president's idiotic candor on the topic didn't help

hazlnut said:

That feeble argument has already been debunked.

thank you for trying...:2wave:

Click to expand...

That's the crack talking, right? They have Obama on tape saying energy prices will skyrocket. If energy prices skyrocket, those additional costs will be added to the goods and services that the companies produce. How do you possibly say that is untrue? (Other than smoking crack?)

NO ONE showed up for ms boxer's markup today!

that's one mighty effective boycott orchestrated by sen's voinovich and alexander

even the dozen dems hid

RealClearPolitics - Video - Sen. Boxer Lone Senator At Climate Bill Hearing

LOLOLOL!

now, THAT's funny

what a completely incompetent pol, ms chairwoman

cap and trade's as dead as health care

indubitably

hazlnut said:

That feeble argument has already been debunked.

thank you for trying...:2wave:

Click to expand...

Humor me, point to a topic where a MODERATE like you has taken the conservative view. Moderates are suppose to be so balanced and all.