By Marc Morano, EPW Blog
Senator Barbara Boxer (D-CA) claimed today that Democrats had the support of 54 U.S. Senators for the Climate Tax Bill. Directly contradicting Boxer’s assertion is a letter signed on June 6 by ten Democratic Senators explicitly stating they “cannot support final passage” of the Climate Tax Bill. The letter indicates that Boxer would apparently only have had at most 45 votes today to support final passage of the bill. (Democrat Senator Robert Byrd of West Virginia, who was absent for today’s vote, had previously voted against bringing the bill to the floor on June 2.) Boxer alleged in a June 6 statement that Democrats “had 54 Senators come down on the side of tackling this crucial issue now” following the today’s cloture vote of 48-36 which effectively killed the bill. But the signed letter by ten Democratic Senators tells a much different story.
“As Democrats from regions of the country that will be most immediately affected by climate legislation, we want to share our concerns with the bill that is currently before the Senate. We commend your leadership in attempting to address one the most significant threats to this and future generations; however, we cannot support final passage of the Boxer Substitute in its current form,” ten Democratic Senators wrote in a letter to Majority Leader Harry Reid and Senator Boxer.
The ten Democrats Senators were: Debbie Stabenow (D-MI), Senator John D. Rockefeller (D-WV), Carl Levin (D-MI), Blanche Lincoln (D-AR), Mark Pryor (D-AR), Jim Webb (D-VA), Evan Bayh (D-IN), Clair McCaskill (D-MO), Sherrod Brown (D-OH), and Ben Nelson (D-FL).
Of the ten Senators, only Senator Brown voted against cloture today, which effectively killed the bill this Congressional session. Boxer’s claim that today’s vote “proves that our nation is ready” to support global warming cap-and-trade legislation fails a basic arithmetic test. Read blog here.
See CBS story on the Dems Yank Global Warming Bill.
Wall Street Journal Political Diary
Environmentalists are stunned that their global warming agenda is in collapse. Senator Harry Reid has all but conceded he lacks the vote for passage in the Senate and that it’s time to move on. Backers of the Warner-Lieberman cap-and-trade bill always knew they would face a veto from President Bush, but they wanted to flex their political muscle and build momentum for 2009. That strategy backfired. The green groups now look as politically intimidating as the skinny kid on the beach who gets sand kicked in his face.
Those groups spent millions advertising and lobbying to push the cap-and-trade bill through the Senate. But it would appear the political consensus on global warming was as exaggerated as the alleged scientific consensus. “With gasoline selling at $4 a gallon, the Democrats picked the worst possible time to bring up cap and trade,” says Dan Clifton, a political analyst for Strategas Research Partners. “This issue is starting to feel like the Hillary health care plan.”
It’s a good analogy. Originally, Hillary health care had towering levels of support, but once people looked at the cost and complexity they cringed. Jobs were on the mind yesterday of Senator Arlen Specter, who has endorsed a tamer version of cap-and-trade. “Workers in Pennsylvania worry that this will send jobs to China,” he tells me. They’re smart to worry. Look no further than the failure of the Kyoto countries to live up to their promised emissions cuts. Bjorn Lomborg, the author of The Skeptical Environmentalist, tells me: “The Europeans are so far behind schedule, it is almost inconceivable that they will meet their targets.” Even John McCain, a cap-and-trade original co-sponsor, now says that this scheme won’t fly until China and India sign on - which could be never.
Senators also criticized Warner-Lieberman’s failure to clearly specify what would happen with the vast revenues the climate bill would generate - some $1 trillion over the first decade, which environmental groups wanted as a slush fund to finance “green technologies.” Senator Judd Gregg of New Hampshire insisted the proceeds be used for other tax cuts, like the elimination of the corporate income tax. The Natural Resources Defense Council desperately tried to persuade Congress in the 11th hour that the expensive price tag is a bargain because “the cost of inaction” would reach $1.8 trillion by 2100 due to increased hurricanes and rising oceans - an argument without a shred of scientific or fiscal credibility. Read more here.
By Marc Morano, EPW Blog
David Harsanyi in the The Denver Post ”Climate is Right for Another Swindle” starts How does Washington plan to resolve our energy problems and control atmospheric temperatures? Well, how do they fix anything? By proposing a gargantuan boondoggle. A “cap and trade” bill, one that will supposedly cut 66 percent of our emissions by 2050, is being debated in Congress this week. To begin with, proponents of America’s Climate Security Act have been misleading the public by claiming that cap and trade is a “market- based” solution. In truth, cap and trade does to the market what “American Idol” does to music. The idea sounds harmless: government caps emissions, and corporations trade the allotted credits among themselves. Some of the credits will be auctioned off by government. The Wall Street Journal estimates these auctions will net $6.7 trillion for government coffers by 2050. And those de facto taxes will not be paid by disreputable energy CEOs and their greasy lobbyist henchmen. They will be paid by you.”
L. Brent Bozell III in the Media Center’s Hurricane Lieberman-Warner writes “The media will sell this bill as an important solution that absolutely everyone who considers himself a responsible citizen will support. Virtually absent from the discussion will be the cost, both financial and in the loss of freedom. If either of these prices are covered, they will be vastly underestimated. A Heritage Foundation analysis is sobering. If you think Katrina was an expensive proposition, consider that according to Heritage, the economic damage of the bill would equal the cost of “660 hurricanes - 35 per year - for two decades.” Don’t expect that statement to make it on the evening news. The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) says Lieberman-Warner would effectively raise taxes on Americans by more than $1 trillion over the next 10 years. That won’t be a headline in USA Today, either.
The Investors Business Daily in ”The Planet Tax” notes “The Senate takes up a bill to strangle the economy and mortgage your children’s future in the name of saving the planet. Hold on to your wallets and your jobs. It’s going to be a bumpy ride. The U.S. needs a Domestic Energy Development Act, but what it might get this week is a Climate Security Act that makes human sacrifices of the American people on the altar of the environmental earth goddess, Gaia. As Ben Lieberman of the Heritage Foundation points out, global warming is a concern, not a crisis. We have recently noted scientists who, on the basis of actual observation and not computer models, have said warming stopped in 1998 and will remain dormant at least for the next decade, even as emissions rise.
Read more of the many editorials and op ed pieces from both the left and right here in this Round-up. See also today’s EPW summary with key points about the $6.7 trillion tax boondoggle that Lieberman Warner is.