The timeline to pass health care legislation slipped not because of attacks by Republicans, but because of infighting among Democrats who have large enough majorities in both chambers of Congress to pass a bill without a single Republican vote. Bloomberg reports that Senate Democrats are also fighting among themselves about the national energy tax that was passed by the House:
The U.S. Senate should abandon efforts to pass legislation curbing greenhouse-gas emissions this year and concentrate on a narrower bill to require use of renewable energy, four Democratic lawmakers say.
“The problem of doing both of them together is that it becomes too big of a lift,” Senator Blanche Lincoln of Arkansas said in an interview last week. “I see the cap-and-trade being a real problem.”
Meanwhile, Harry Reid has said, “I don’t think we are going to take to the Senate floor a bill stripped of climate provisions.”
