Climate Change: A Good Step, but Too Little Too Late

You probably already know that the GOP has been blocking the markup of the climate bill in the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee.  A quorum including two or more Republicans is required to vote on amendments to the bill.  Only one Republican per day has attended.

Senate Democrats in the Environment and Public Works Committee finally squelched Republican boycotts and passed a version of the climate bill Wednesday morning. Last week, Republican senators refused to show up to committee hearings in an attempt to stall the bill. Brian Beutler of Talking Points Memo notes that EPW has now set “the stage for other panels to amend the legislation.”

To no one’s surprise, Sen. James Inhofe, R-Okla., immediately complained about the legislation on Fox News. Sen. Max Baucus, D-Mont., was the lone Democrat that did not vote, which Inhofe interpreted as a sign that the bill is “dead.”

Chairman Barbara Boxer, D-Calif., was much more upbeat and argued that the Republican boycott actually marred their credibility. “The absence of the Republicans during the Environmental Protection Agency’s presentation was a clear message that their criticism of the EPA analysis was not a substantive one,” Boxer said. “We are pleased that despite the Republican boycott, we have been able to move the bill.”

Inhofe also condemned Boxer for passing the bill through the committee unconventionally. Aaron Wiener writes for The Washington Independent that “Without a quorum that included at least two Republicans, the committee was unable to open formal debate on amendments to the bill. But passage requires just a simple majority, and Chairman Boxer and the Democratic leadership chose to forgo amendments in order to move the legislation quickly, given that the end of the GOP boycott was nowhere in sight.”  Luckily, now that the bill is moving on to other committees, Inhofe and his Republican EPW colleagues will no longer have much of a say on the bill’s final outcome.

With Copenhagen just a month away, Kate Sheppard argues for Mother Jones that the odds of passing a viable climate bill before the climate summit are very grim. On Tuesday, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid announced that the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) will run a series of studies after each committee’s climate and energy bills are combined into a single piece of legislation. Even though the bill passed through the EPW committee, other committees, such as the Energy and Natural Resources Committee, Finance Committee, and Agriculture Committee, need to weigh in before the bill is reviewed by the EPA and sent for a vote in the full Senate. How will this affect climate talks in Copenhagen? Sheppard writes that, “Without the urgency imposed by the Copenhagen deadline, any little momentum that the climate bill had could disappear very fast.”… [emphasis added]

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This was an excellent move on Boxer’s part.  I only wish she had taken this step sooner.  Democrats in the House and Senate need to recognize that the GOP is conduct6ing a war on progress and are disregarding the national well being in favor of their perception of political advantage.  There have been too many olive branches already.  It’s time cut them out of the process at every opportunity.