How lame are the GOP’s delaying tactics on the climate bill? Even the Washington Post’s editors — no friend of climate action or clean energy — criticized them today in piece titled, “Unhelpful atmosphere,” pointing out that “GOP members want the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to perform a series of modeling runs that would be more extensive than those it has done on similar legislation” and “EPA Associate Administrator David McIntosh said Tuesday that the differences [between the House and Senate bill] wouldn’t even show up in the agency’s computer modeling, leaving little reason to conduct a completely new analysis before committee work commences.” The editorial noted, “Draft texts of Kerry-Boxer have been publicly available since the end of September, and a more complete version has been out for more than a week. The GOP should be ready to offer amendments, particularly after Ms. Boxer extended the deadline for their submission to Tuesday evening…. Ms. Boxer brought Mr. McIntosh into the room Tuesday to answer just such questions. It would have been constructive if GOP committee members had been there to question him.”
Guest blogger Noreen Nielson, Director for Energy Communications at Progressive Media, shares some further insight on the GOP’s delaying tactics.
As the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee began meeting for markup yesterday on the Clean Energy Jobs and American Power Act, only one Republican member, Sen. George Voinovich, bothered to show. The boycott, carried out by the six other minority members, suggests they are joining in lockstep with the rest of the Party of NO to block any reform that will help rebuild our economy – from clean energy to health care to financial reform.
During this morning’s meeting, Sen. Voinovich, speaking on behalf of the minority party, said they “sincerely” wanted to work with Democrats to pass the Clean Energy Jobs Act. Yet past statements indicate otherwise. (Note: All the below statements were made before the Senate bill was even introduced.)
- Sen. Inhofe’s prediction for the Senate bill following the passage of Waxman-Markey: “It’s dead in the water.’’ [June 30, 2009]
- Sen. David Vitter: “I’m predicting — at least as we speak now — that we can kill any major climate change legislation on the Senate floor…” [July 7, 2009]
- He continued: “I’m very hopeful we’ll be able to block any major climate change bill like that which came out of the House on the Senate floor.”
- Sen. Bond: “I think certain people pushing this bill see me as one of the biggest thorns in their sides. If they don’t now, they will.” [September 28, 2009]
- Sen. Barrasso [and Sen. Inhofe]: “[W]orking together to make sure the Senate doesn’t pass a bill that to me is going to cripple our economy and raise taxes on American families.” [July 15, 2009]
Voinovich then went on to discuss how the inadequate analysis of the Clean Energy Jobs Act was the reason for the blockade – providing nothing more than a straw man excuse. The EPA, the Obama administration and others have consistently said the updated EPA analysis provides an accurate portrait of the Senate bill’s projected impacts.
According to EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson’s testimony before the Senate Environment Committee, the two bills were so similar that they will likely have the same impact on costs, energy use, and other variables.
“Earlier this year, EPA ran the major provisions of the House clean-energy legislation through several economic computer models. When it comes to the specifications that the models can detect, the Clean Energy Jobs and American Power Act is very similar to the House legislation. Nevertheless, EPA has examined the ways in which the Senate bill is different and determined which of the conclusions reached about the House-passed bill can confidently be said to apply to the Senate bill as well.”
The House-passed bill mentioned above that can “confidently be applied to the Senate bill” received extensive evaluation and scrutiny from a number of government agencies, including the Environmental Protection Agency, Congressional Budget Office, and Energy Information Administration. And the Senate Committee held numerous comprehensive legislative hearings on the bill last week which included 54 expert witnesses in nine panels.
Moreover as the EPA’s David McIntosh stressed during today’s meeting, re-running the models every time a bill is amended or tweaked is costly and unnecessary. It costs taxpayers at least $135,000 every time the analysis models are re-run and the models are “not designed to detect fine-grain details,” meaning another analysis right now would result in “vanishingly small” differences from the currently available modeling.
Sen. Boxer said this morning that Sen. Reid has promised a full five week EPA analysis of the final merged bill before floor consideration.
So the question is: What is the real motivation behind the Republican members blocking clean energy reform? The costs of doing nothing to combat climate change greatly outweigh the costs of acting now. We’re spending $1 billion a day on foreign oil, money that could instead be invested here at home to help create 1.7 million new jobs, increase our security and lessen our pollution.
Perhaps it has something to do with the $3,507,321the seven minority members of the EPW Committee have received from Big Oil, along with millions more from utilities, mining and the national resource sector. This is in addition to the billions Big Oil has spent on lobbying, astroturfing and smear campaigns. Exxon Mobil alone spent $7.2 million on lobbying in the last quarter – more than the total of the entire alternative energy sector.
| oil/gas | utilities | mining | nat resources sector | |
| Inhofe | $ 1,223,723 | $ 437,967 | $ 197,850 | $ 2,045,140 |
| Alexander | $ 400,375 | - | - | $ 663,000 |
| Voinovich | $ 360,329 | $ 570,726 | $ 260,799 | $ 1,000,000 |
| Vitter | $ 659,635 | $ 165,665 | - | $ 974,000 |
| Barrasso | $ 169,250 | - | $ 63,650 | $ 391,700 |
| Crapo | $ 247,699 | $ 278,441 | - | $ 784,136 |
| Bond | $ 446,310 | $ 313,165 | - | $ 1,013,063 |
| GOP total | $ 3,507,321 | $ 1,765,964 | $ 522,299 | $ 6,871,039 |
*All data accessed today from www.opensecrets.org
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While we were pleased when Lindsay Graham endorsed climate change legislation, Tuesday’s session shows how much of an uphill battle we still have. Voinovich didn’t even bother to stick around to listen to EPA official David McIntosh explain why the study he (Voinovich) was asking for would be worthless. People need to stop dwelling on the claims that Inhofe is the last flat-Earther out there and recognize that yesterday’s stunt shows that many Senate Republicans have no interest in climate legislation — even if deep down they may agree with the science. Money trumps everything.
Big money pull a million strings
Big money hold the prize
Big money weave a mighty web
Big money draw the flies
Can we save us from ourselves?
Best,
D
Hey, Dano, nice quote from “The Big Money.” Never thought I’d see Neil Peart’s lyrics on CP.
Wow… that table is impressive. Inhoffe really stands out in the sheer amount of money collected from the oil/gas industry. No wonder he does not “understand” or “believe” the consensus science!
This is more proof that what is called “conservatism” in America today is a fake, phony, trumped-up, focus-group-tested, corporate-sponsored pseudo-ideology, for consumption by weak-minded, ignorant, mean-spirited Ditto-Heads.
None of these so-called “conservative” Senators have an ideological bone in their body. They are bribed-bought-and-paid-for agents of their corporate paymasters — in this instance, for the fossil fuel, mining and other extractive industries and the large utilities that are heavily invested in coal. They do what they do and say what they say because that’s what they are paid to do and say. Their only “ideology” is naked greed.
So the question is: What is the real motivation behind the Republican members blocking clean energy reform?
The old adage – ‘Paralysis by Analysis’
If the Republicans succeed, this could end up as the biggest climate change trigger of all.
The sad thing is that people will somehow adapt, though in greatly reduced numbers, and in sterile and militarized circumstances. It’s the rest of God’s creation that will be massacred.
Many Republican opponents are fundamentalist Christians, so it would be a win-win for them. They get whooshed up to heaven that much sooner. And if this kind of fantasy drives policy, maybe the earth needs to reset the whole evolutionary pattern here on planet Earth.
No doubt the Republicans on this committee also support Obama’s methodical information-gathering before laying out his new strategy in Afghanistan as well…
I will keep this cartoon to remember the days when the Republican Party decide to kill the new “Clean energy economy”, so they don´t have any chance to take credit in the future for the state of the economy.
For me there is an irony in CP drawing attention to Toles’ cartoon from the time of his inauguration in the current context of the moneyed political conflict over CEJAP. I’ve tried to capture what I mean in a larger view of what was drawn. That effort is linked here.
I feel that moral outrage abounds these days.
To the degree this is so, I observe it tends to move people toward non-rational motivated reasoning. Consequently, I speculate that we are simply not evolved enough, as a species, to think clearly and govern sapiently when facing the fears involved in simultaneous environmental and economic collapses. Neocons obfuscate in hopes of saving a better past. Neo-progressives promote a industry scripted policy that is both scientifically inadequate, and a different iteration of the same hope. The irony of the resulting moral warfare would be funny, if the consequences for society were not so dire.