After cap-and-trade energy legislation cleared the first test in
the House of Representatives this summer, it stalled in the
world’s most deliberative body. Then, John Kerry decided to
jumpstart a compromise bill among his colleagues.
Ever since Kerry came up short in the 2004 presidential election,
he’s been casting about for a legacy and seems to think he has a
winner. The way he’s been talking and writing about it
practically screams “history books,” and it certainly wouldn’t be
bad for his domestic tranquility. His wife’s Teresa and John
Heinz III Foundation is a major booster of trendy green causes.
It focuses “in particular” on influencing “those who write the
laws and cast legislation-creating votes.”
The final cap-and-trade bill, Kerry said, would be the result of
“honest give and take” among all senators of good will —
principally Democrats. But what give, which take? Right now there
is talk of adding provisions to the bill that would allow more
nuclear power and offshore drilling. Lindsey Graham, the South
Carolina Republican, may even provide the necessary bipartisan
cover to help pass the bill.
Talk of adding nuclear or drilling to the bill, however, is just
talk. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid has done everything in
his power to keep a nuclear waste disposal facility from opening
in the Yucca Mountains. Offshore drilling is deeply unpopular
with the Florida delegation, and the drilling issue is too
complicated to be part of a grand compromise.
What we’re more likely to see is an ugly repeat of what happened
in the House to pass cap-and-trade: the worst sort of pork-fried
deal making followed by an absurdly fast vote, with opponents
left sputtering.
Recall that when Henry Waxman and Edward Markey introduced a
draft of their cap and trade bill in May, it was a svelte 400
pages long. It grew to 1,200 pages the week before the vote and
then an additional 300 pages the morning of the vote, making it
impossible for Republicans to digest the unappetizing contents of
the legislation in time.
What was in those extra pages? They were fattened with special
favors to representatives otherwise inclined to vote against a
massive new energy tax. Even that might not have been enough if
the House leadership didn’t promise numerous representatives that
they would add extra exemptions or favors into the bill when the
House and Senate come together to reconcile the two bills.
The draft of the bill that Kerry introduced in the Senate is 800
pages long. How long will it be after he is done doling out
favors? We’re pretty sure, from having listened to a few of
Kerry’s stump speeches, that his bill will be much longer than
the House version.
Many parliamentarians claim that the Senate is good break for bad
legislation, with its supermajority requirement for controversial
bills. That’s true, to a point. But there is not much organized
opposition to cap-and-trade and Kerry has already moved to
neutralize the bill’s largest potential critic: big business.
He did that by allowing a coalition of corporate titans known as
the Climate Action Partnership to help write the legislation.
Kerry’s bill incorporates almost all of the proposals from the
CAP’s Blueprint for Legislative Action.
Why did big business agree to go along? Some companies favor
cap-and-trade because they are owned by the Obama administration
(General Motors). Others stand to make windfall profits on the
carbon derivatives market created by cap-and-trade (Alcoa and
DuPont). And some support a carbon cap because it’s good for the
bottom line, because it will hobble competition (General Electric
is a leader in low carbon technologies).
With big business effectively bought off, Kerry could start
soliciting senators. His strategy was — and is — quite simple:
Make a cap-and-trade scheme worthwhile to at least 60 of his
colleagues so as to beat a filibuster threat from those senators
who have the most to lose, chiefly representatives of
coal-dependent economies.
There’s already a long line of favor-seekers. Senators from
natural gas producing states outlined their demands in a letter
to leadership. Rust-belt senators want constituent industries to
get a cut of the carbon derivatives market. Prairie state
senators want to pay farmers to sequester carbon. Corn-belt
senators want to relax regulations for corn-based ethanol. Etc.
Though maybe “favor seekers” is the wrong way of looking at it.
The term “compromise” takes on an entirely new meaning under
Senator Kerry’s august leadership. Forget such fuddy-duddy
notions as “give and take” or “back and forth.” The deal is:
Supporters of his cap-and-trade bill get everything they want.
That’s the only way they’ll vote for a massive new energy tax at
a time of straitened economic circumstances. Many senators who
would be inclined to oppose the bill face a tough choice: Join
now to exact concessions or fight it out, and risk massive
economic fallout for their constituents.
The newly senior senator from Massachusetts knows that he has one
shot to get the bill through, so he is moving it at a pace that
is, by the Senate’s standards, almost reckless. He is adding
pages furiously behind the scenes to craft something that can get
through the Senate with very little debate. Ohio Senator George
Voinovich complained this week, “We’re going to have hearings on
Tuesday and I haven’t seen the bill.”
