A Gift That Keeps On Giving - Baucus Has "Serious Reservations" On Climate Bill - NYT

[hatrack]

Senate Finance Chairman Max Baucus said today that he has "serious reservations" about a major global warming bill and warned fellow Democrats to water down the measure inhopes of getting it through the Senate. Speaking at the start of an Environment and Public Works Committee hearing where he is the second highest-ranking member, the Montana Democrat said he wanted to weaken the bill's 2020 target for greenhouse gas emissions -- now 20 percent below 2005 levels. He did not name a specific midterm target for the heat-trapping gases, instead telling reporters he hoped for "some modification."

The six-term senator also said he hoped to attach pre-emption language to the Senate climate bill, S. 1733 (pdf), that stops U.S. EPA from implementing a 2007 Supreme Court opinion that opens the door to new greenhouse gas emission standards on industry.

"We cannot avoid a first step that takes us further away from an achievable consensus from common-sense climate change legislation," Baucus said. "We could build that consensus here in this committee. If we don't, we risk wasting another month, another year, another Congress, without taking a step forward to our future."

EDIT

Ed. - Not to be outdone . . . Ohio's George Voinovich questioned whether senators have a firm grip on the implications of the legislation, as well as the quality of a U.S. EPA analysis (pdf) released late Friday that did not actually include any new modeling runs on the at-issue bill. "Why are we trying to jam down this legislation now?" Voinovich asked. "Wouldn't it be smarter to take our time and do it right like we didn't do it the last time around when we had this legislation in the works?"

EDIT

http://www.nytimes.com/gwire/2009/10/27/27greenwire-baucus-has-serious-reservations-with-senate-cl-30810.html

[Viking12]

1. Douchebag.

[malakai2]

2. Of course he does

Hard to look like he's trying to protect all those (temporary) oil and coal jobs in the eastern 2/3 of the state if he's also on record saying that maybe burning so much coal and oil is a problem. Add hard rock mining, farming, ranching, and timber lobbies in that state, and we're lucky to have even one D senator helping our committee counts.

I'm not happy about it, but I'm much less pissed at him for playing politics this way than I am at the idea that tens of millions of us in populous states have no more representation on this issue than hundreds of thousands of us in less populous states. Especially when it's a committee chairman representing less than one million people out of a nation of roughly 300 million who's holding up the show to protect those tens of thousands of (temporary) jobs.

It's almost funny to think that even at this point where it may be too late to do anything about climate change, when we know what the problem is and vaguely how to address it, we don't do anything because parliamentary rules "force" us to weaken our approach to the problem so as to acquiesce to the economic wishes of a relatively small number of households in one region of one state.

[excess_3]

3. one state is allowed to pollute a lot more

why is that fair?
guess which state gets to pollute more.
California

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=115&topic_id=213425&mesg_id=213425