Senate Dems May Back Murkowski Plan to Block EPA Climate Rules

[depakid]

Sen. Jay Rockefeller (D-W.Va.) said Monday that he “could very well” vote for Sen. Lisa Murkowski’s (R-Alaska) plan to block any Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) climate change rules even though it goes much further than his competing measure. he Senate is slated to vote Thursday on Murkowski’s resolution, which cannot be amended or filibustered but nonetheless faces a tough road to winning 51 votes.

“It is a message about EPA,” Rockefeller told reporters in the Capitol on Monday evening. “I think it will send a message regardless of how many votes it gets.” That message, he added, “would be with respect to EPA’s closing in on coal.”

Rockefeller — a proponent of his home state’s coal industry — has floated a separate bill that would require a two-year pause before EPA can implement rules limiting emissions from stationary industrial sources like power plants.

Murkowski’s plan is more sweeping.

It would overturn EPA’s “endangerment finding” last year that greenhouse gases threaten humans. The finding is the legal precursor to rules that will require facilities including oil refineries and power plants to minimize emissions.

Murkowski believes EPA regulations will harm the economy and eventually reach small businesses, despite an agency plan to shield small emitters.

But the endangerment finding also enables EPA rules to limit vehicle emissions, which Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) noted in attacking Murkowski’s plan on the Senate floor Monday.

“This week, we will debate a resolution of disapproval that will prevent the Department of Transportation and the Environmental Protection Agency from working together to slow the pollution from heavy-duty vehicles,” Reid said on the Senate floor. “The result of this resolution, if passed, would be to waste at least 450 million more barrels of oil than we need to. That is wrong.”

EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson bashed Murkowski’s effort Monday in a http://www.huffingtonpost.com/lisa-p-jackson/the-murkowski-resolution_b_602793.htmlHuffington Post op-ed>.

Murkowski has thus far attracted three Democratic co-sponsors:
More: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/lisa-p-jackson/the-murkowski-resolution_b_602793.html

[villager]

1. Don't these corrupt, soul-sucking assholes realize that *killing the planet*

will be "bad for jobs" too?

Don't even answer -- rhetorical frakkin' question.

[Jamastiene]

2. I swear it is like invasion of the body snatchers in our party's leadership.

I don't even recognize any part of the Democratic Party platform in so many of their votes any more.

[glitch]

4. It IS like Invastion of the Body Snatchers.

Scariest movies (original and remake). Maybe when new politicians get to DC and take their physicals they get a little needle lobotomy through the eye.

[Nihil]

3. Bought and sold ...

They've been bought and our future has been fucking sold.

So much for the "difference" between D & R in politics.

[hatrack]

5. Why do I even bother paying attention to politics any more?

Why do I EVEN FUCKING BOTHER?

[JoeyT]

6. Someone should come in here and remind us how important it is to elect people like Rockefeller.

It's so easy to forget.

[Nederland]

7. Rockefeller votes with the Democratic party 96.9% of the time

Perhaps that explanation works for you? :shrug:

http://projects.washingtonpost.com/congress/members/r000361/