Keith Hennessy notes, in his post The
New York Times (implicitly) calls for no climate change law,
that “the New York Times editorial board is leaning
toward having ‘an issue rather than a law.’”
In doing so he importantly reminds us of key Senate votes, which
are somehow as easy to forget in the maelstrom as then-candidate
Obama’s vow that he seeks cap-and-trade to “cause electricity
prices [to] necessarily skyrocket” and “bankrupt” coal and those
who would burn it.
These votes that, at minimum, must be brought to the fore of the
Senate debate early and often were “in April on the Senate budget
resolution:
- 67 Senators, including 27 Democrats,
voted against creating fast-track reconciliation
protections for a cap-and-trade bill, meaning that
supporters need 60 votes to pass a bill, rather than 51.
- 54 Senators, including 13 Democrats,
voted for an amendment that would allow any Senator to
initiate a vote to block any climate change provision which
‘cause[s] significant job loss in manufacturing or
coal-dependent U.S. regions such as the Midwest, Great Plains,
or South.’”
Now, this post also prompts me to remember a telephone call I
received from a White House aide the night in December 2006 that
incoming chair of the Senate Environment Committee Barbara Boxer
supposedly broke it to Duke Energy’s Jim Rogers that no, he
shouldn’t now expect a cap-n-tax bill to reward his loyal support
with billions in rents. It seemed that the issue was too
important to have against Bush, and for ‘08, according to San
Francisco’s own Ms. Boxer, who lives in a world where this issue
is not a punch line.
She, apparently like the New York Times now, saw it
as more important to have the issue than the law. The greens got
wind of this, however - Rogers, so my caller said, was beside
himself and ringing everyone in town he could in outrage, so it
was hard not to get wind of it - and demanded what
proved to be the Boxer-led disastrous vote last summer in which
the bill had to be pulled from the floor in a matter of hours.
‘08 of course saw two candidates about equally Moonbattish on the
issue, so no subsequent, real debate or opportunity for the
people to weigh in was had, sadly.
My response at the time was to ask as many in the lobbying
community as I could muster to meet, urging them to press the
advantage, demanding votes, even on Kyoto. They blanched
(Washington representatives are a special lot, living in mortal
fear not of something bad being passed that harms their company’s
interests, but of getting that phone call from the home office
asking “so…what do you think of the deal?”, and having no
earthly idea what the deal is. So, the notions of fighting and
winning aren’t as innate as they might be for some of us with the
luxury of ideological purity).
So it may be that the Congressional Democrats, White House and
their handmaidens at the NYT really believe that,
outside their world, global warming tax just knocks ‘em dead (as
the Times’ Pauline Kael, possibly apocryphally, couldn’t
believe that Nixon won given that no one she knew voted
for him). The evidence that I see tells me something different.
Let’s find out.
