RSS
Home
Foul climate for Boxer's Senate Panel (VIDEO)
Print
Email
RSS
Subscribe
In the real world, if you purposely don't show up at a crucial business meeting you run the risk of getting fired. Apparently, the group of Republicans holding up the Senate's energy and climate bill on Tuesday felt a special sense of exception and entitlement. They certainly wouldn't condone similar actions by unions to boycott work.
As the saying goes, "Half of life is just showing up." If the seven Republicans had just shown up for the session yesterday, they would have been able to question the EPA Associate Admininstrator David McIntosh, who says differences between the House and Senate energy-climate bill wouldn't even register on the computer's modeling. The EPA went the extra mile to produce a meta-analysis of what the differences are between the House and Senate bill.
The House legislation, passed in June, has been analyzed by the EPA, the Congressional Budget Office, the Energy Information Administration and several other government agencies. Besides, Boxer says the bill will get further analysis (after Republican input and amendments) before it is presented to the full Senate. In this case, it seems to me that another analysis would not be productive, would stall talks, and would be a waste of taxpayers' money.
No wonder the public takes such a dim view of the Congress, which moves at a glacial pace without additional interference. Clean energy and climate legislation is long overdue and needs to be addressed now.
George Voinovich (R-Ohio), in his last term as senator, is the frontman for the absent Republicans and spoke for about 15 minutes yesterday (the other senators may be using the free time to get their personal errands done). While Voinovich makes a couple good points, the decision to boycott the work session is clearly a bad one. Click the link below for a video of his comments:
http://www.cleveland.com/open/index.ssf/2009/11/amid_gop_climate-change_boycot.html
This just in on Wed: The Republicans decided not to show up for the second day straight! Early Christmas shopping?
For related articles, click on the links below:
