Last year, the House passed the Waxman-Markey climate bill on June 26. The Senate is supposed to unveil the Kerry-Boxer climate bill on Wednesday. To those on the left, the Kerry-Boxer bill is a give away to the fossil fuel industry. To those on the right, it's another example of the fascist-commie-leftist plot to take over everything.
So what are the odds that a bill will make it through the Senate?
If you ask Competitive Enterprise's Director of Energy and Global Warming Policy Myron Ebell, he'll tell you that "the chance that the Senate will pass a comprehensive energy-rationing (a.k.a climate) bill this year remains close to zero. BP's big oil spill in the Gulf changes very little."
Kate Sheppard covers energy and environmental politics for Mother Jones. She said, "The hundreds of thousands of gallons of oil hemorrhaging into the Gulf of Mexico couldn't be a better reminder that dependence on fossil fuels is a dirty business. The spill should motivate legislators to act on climate and energy legislation that would overhaul our failed system, but instead it currently threatens to blow up already fraught negotiations in the Senate."
Foolishly hoping to garner some Republican support, which has and won't happen, Kerry's been watering down the bill to please the fossil fuel industry.
"Before the dust-up," Sheppard said, "the Democratic co-author, John Kerry, promised that among the backers of their bill would be three of the five biggest oil companies — including BP. Kerry, Lindsey Graham, the South Carolina Republican, and Joe Lieberman had gone through all manner of contortions to please major polluting industries, larding their bill with numerous incentives for old, dirty energy sources."
Graham was sponsoring the bill, but now he isn't.
Republican senators will undoubtedly filibuster this bill, requiring a 60 vote super-majority to allow the bill to be debated. It's highly unlikely that Democrats can muster 60 votes - even with a 59 seat majority in the Senate.
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Source:
Does the Climate Bill Have a Chance?. New York Times. May 9, 2010.
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