Here’s the Associated Press Story out of Washington. My take is in the color blue.
WASHINGTON — Republican senators on Monday demanded additional studies on the cost and job impact of a climate bill before it is voted on by a key committee, exposing the sharp partisan divide in Congress over legislation aimed at addressing global warming.
When is Congress going to look for the greater good and work together for life and a future long past their partisanships?
Ranking GOP members of six Senate committees that are playing a part in crafting an overall bill to cut greenhouse gases said that an Environmental Protection Agency analysis was unsatisfactory, although supporters of the bill called it an exhaustive examination.
It’s a stalling tactic that Congress has used for every delay that didn’t fit the specific needs of an individual constituency. Ridiculous earmarks attached to spending bills will be the downfall of our republic. Nobody in Congress is thinking beyond his or her own selfish needs.
Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-Calif., co-sponsor of the climate bill, which is before her Environment and Public Works Committee, said she plans to press ahead with consideration of the measure on Tuesday, even as GOP panel members threatened to boycott the proceedings.
It’s more of the same. This time it’s Republicans threatening, tomorrow it will be Democrats. I keep asking, where are the statesmen?
In a letter to Boxer, the Republicans warned that failure to accommodate GOP senators seeking further studies "would severely damage rather than help" the chances of getting the bipartisan support needed to get a bill through the Senate.
Global Climate Change is been studied and studied to death for the last 25 or more years.
The Democratic bill calls for imposing mandatory caps on greenhouse gas emissions from power plants and industrial facilities and cutting emissions by 20 percent by 2020. Polluters would be given emission allowances that they could trade among themselves to ease the economic effect of the transition from fossil fuels.
By 2020 we are going to be up the proverbial residue waterway and these easements from fossil fuel regulations will be moot.
Every member of Congress should be made to read: “Why Your World Is About To Get A Whole Lot Smaller…Oil and the End of Globalization," by Jeff Rubin.
But Republicans have argued the bill — patterned after legislation passed by the House earlier this year — amounts to a huge energy tax because energy, including electricity, from fossil fuels will become more expensive. Boxer argues such costs can be contained and cites the EPA study that says the cost to households would on average be $80 to $111 a year…
Sorry Senator Boxer, Congress has no track record of containing costs. Cost is not the issue. Clean air is and the warming of the planet is the issue. Get with the science.
…Boxer said on Tuesday she will make available officials from the EPA so Republicans can quiz them about their cost study.
Again?
"We think this is going the extra mile for our friends on the other side," Boxer told reporters Monday. "We want to move the process forward."
So my constituents in California will think that I am working for their environmental causes.
But Sen. James Inhofe of Oklahoma, the environment committee's ranking Republican, said he expects GOP senators to stay away, except possibly for one Republican to make the case for the boycott.
That will play well back in Oklahoma, a big OIL PRODUCING AND REFINERY STATE, along with Texas their neighboring state.
"There has to be some sort of leverage" to get a more detailed study, said Inhofe, a sharp critic of not only the Democratic bill, but of the science of climate change.
Oil, Oklahoma! Daahh…fossil fuels, refining, contributing to global warming? Who would have thunk it?
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