The White House is trying to assert its influence over the Senate climate debate after President Obama's nationwide energy address left some questioning how aggressively the president will push for comprehensive climate and energy legislation.
Obama made calls yesterday morning to Sens. John Kerry (D-Mass.) and Richard Lugar (R-Ind.), both sponsors of competing Senate energy bills, and the White House announced plans to host a bipartisan group of senators next week to discuss the path forward on an energy package.
White House press secretary Robert Gibbs also insisted that the president remains committed to passing legislation that caps carbon dioxide emissions, fending off claims that the president backed away from the approach in his Oval Office speech Tuesday night.
"I think it is safe to say that the president's direction on energy is very similar to the direction that is in the Kerry-Lieberman bill and that the president feels strongly that including a component to deal with climate is important in comprehensive energy reform," Gibbs said.
The energy and climate bill (pdf) co-sponsored by Kerry and Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.) would cap domestic greenhouse gas emissions across multiple sectors of the economy. Many Senate Democrats and environmentalists say such a broad approach is needed to combat global warming, but critics say tagging a carbon price onto energy legislation would make it politically toxic. ...
Sen. James Inhofe (R-Okla.), one of the Senate's most vocal foes of climate legislation, said Obama did not mention a carbon cap because he knows the approach does not have enough support. "He realizes the votes just flat aren't there and the whole Kerry-Lieberman thing that's supposed to be different from the rest is no different -- cap and trade is cap and trade." ...
Some of the options on the table include the Kerry-Lieberman bill, Bingaman's energy bill with a nationwide renewable energy standard; an alternative "cap and dividend (pdf)" approach for pricing carbon emissions from Sens. Maria Cantwell (D-Wash.) and Susan Collins (R-Maine); and Lugar's bill (pdf) that promotes energy efficiency.
In the last paragraph are some of the groups that will benefit from government collusion...
The coalition includes the Alliance to Save Energy, the American Wind Energy Association, the Business Council for Sustainable Energy, the Biomass Power Association, Growth Energy, the Energy Recovery Council, the Geothermal Energy Association, the National Hydropower Association and the Solar Energy Industries Association.
Read the complete article here.
Comment: I'm always completely amazed that the clowns in Congress never consider how the laws and regulations that are currently on the books strangle business, entrepreneurship and productivity. The only thing they know is to continue heaping more laws on to the old laws until you have no idea what you are trying to change or what's underneath.
It's just like our tax returns. From one year to the next we never know what the bloody law is, so I have to wonder how these jackasses are going to revamp the entire energy structure in one sitting when it has taken over 100 years to get where we are today. How are they going to know what is best for their respective state when the majority of the clowns in the Senate don't really come from that state nor reside in it.
However, you know who would know; someone who has spent a few years working in their respective state legislative body and lived a good part of their life in that state, that's who would.
When you really start pulling the threads apart of the fabric being weaved by the clowns in Washington you start to see how screwed up the whole piece really is. Then you realize quickly that the movement to repeal the 17th Amendment is not some quixotic ideal, but almost like an amputation that's needed to remove a dying limb in order to save the body.
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