House Passes Landmark Climate Bill
Jun 26th, 2009 | 6 responses
In a triumph for President Barack Obama, the Democratic-controlled House narrowly passed sweeping legislation Friday that calls for the nation’s first limits on pollution linked to global warming and aims to usher in a new era of cleaner, yet more costly energy.
The vote was 219-212, capping months of negotiations and days of intense bargaining among Democrats. Republicans were overwhelmingly against the measure, arguing it would destroy jobs in the midst of a recession while burdening consumers with a new tax in the form of higher energy costs.
The House’s action fulfilled Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s vow to clear major energy legislation before July 4, and sent the measure to a highly uncertain fate in the Senate.
Here’s the breakdown of the votes — eight Republicans voted for it; 44 Democrats against it. MyDD, “If most of the Democrats who voted against the bill were Blue Dogs, why did we make so many compromises to appease them?”
They weren’t all Blue Dogs. Congressman Dennis Kucinich (D-OH), an advocate for clean energy and the environment, voted against the bill:
“I oppose H.R. 2454, the American Clean Energy and Security Act of 2009. The reason is simple. It won’t address the problem. In fact, it might make the problem worse.
Obama personally lobbied lawmakers for the bill.
John Broder in the NYTimes:
At the heart of the legislation is a cap-and-trade system that sets a limit on overall emissions of heat-trapping gases while allowing utilities, manufacturers and other emitters to trade pollution permits, or allowances, among themselves. The cap would grow tighter over the years, pushing up the price of emissions and presumably driving industry to find cleaner ways of making energy. [...]
As difficult as House passage proved, it is just the beginning of the energy and climate debate in Congress. The issue now moves to the Senate, where political divisions and regional differences are even more stark. [...]
While some environmentalists enthusiastically supported the legislation, others, including Greenpeace and Friends of the Earth, opposed it. Industry officials were split, with the United States Chamber of Commerce and the National Association of Manufacturers opposing the bill and some of the nation’s biggest corporations, including Dow Chemical and Ford, backing it. [...]
The House legislation reflects a series of concessions necessary to attract the support of Democrats from different regions and with different ideologies. In the months of horse-trading before the vote Friday, the bill’s targets for emissions of heat-trapping gases were weakened, its mandate for renewable electricity was scaled back, and incentives for industries were sweetened.
Media Matters, “Criticism of the bill from the right — especially its cap-and-trade provisions — has not been the product of principle, but of misinformation and, at times, willful denial.”
6 Responses to “House Passes Landmark Climate Bill”
3:09 AM, 300 pages — leave it to the Dems, when given a chance to lead, to show their true selves and to outdo the Midnight Pay Raise mischief of a few years earlier. Add insult to injury that the bill threatens.
The farther-left organizations dislike the bill because it isn't damaging enough. The bill is not a “compromise,” or “moderate” [sic; as with this Web site's name] but is far too damaging itself. (It's pretty bad when the loss of jobs from it is so obvious the bill itself contains provisions for assisting those who lose their jobs because of it! Is that supposed to be what we should accept as “compassionate” behavior by Washington?) Best of all is no damage at all, meaning no bill like this at all, ever.
It's going to be even worse if you hear over-ambitious Dems out of touch with the mainstream (who flooded communication lines to Congress imploring it not to pass this bad bill) start to reveal that this is but an incrementalist measure (a lib Dem redefinition of “compromise”), call it a “first step” or use the contemporary idiotic metaphorical phrase, “down payment,” promising (threatening) more, worse to come.
Both the health care legislation and this legislation have been idiotically rushed and are piles of garbage, and should be gutted by the Senate, even if it leads to being vetoed by Obama and not overridden (giving Americans relief from destructive attack for at least a while while the Dems regroup).
I'm looking forward to at least some reform and reason being applied (deep hacking, that is) by the Senate.
I'm concerned about the next item being rushed surprisingly, that of “immigration reform” (amnesty).
The republicans had 8 long years during which they had every opportunity to address the issue of climate change. Instead they chose to focus their energies on a bogus war while ignoring legitimate problems. It's hard to take their criticisms very seriously now that a new administration is showing some responsibility in this area. If the R's want to cement that label, “the party of no” into place, they are on exactly the right track. I'm sure their stance on healthcare legislation will provide another such opportunity… which btw is another area they chose to ignore for 8 years.
“The republicans had 8 long years during which they had every opportunity to address the issue of climate change.” [...] [sigh]
That doesn't mean in any way that they should have engaged in destructive idiocy — they should never have sought anything like what's in this garbage bill (not to mention the little last-moment stunt the Dems committed prior to its passage), much less the worse things that even worse people are demanding.
“a new administration is showing some responsibility in this area”
This bill and the arguments “supporting” it are highly irresponsible as well as occasionally pathological.
Again, you miss the greater point. Consider the difference between ignoring an issue and grappling with it. Nothing ventured, nothing gained.
“Again, you miss the greater point.” [...] [sigh]
I'm not surprised you'd be incorrect again. The _real_ issue(s) must be correctly understood and not be the basis for wrongdoing in the name of “grappling,” “venturing,” “Feeling Good,” or any other illogical and false rationale. (If anything, the “precautionary principle” used by leftists as a club to inhibit progress as of the 1960s needs to be self-directed, if such people can understand and learn from the experience.)