Climate bill passes without GOP By: Lisa Lerer November 5, 2009 10:11 AM EST
The Senate Environment and Public Works Committee approved climate change legislation Thursday with no Republicans voting for the bill or even participating in the process.
With Republican boycotting the proceedings, Committee Chairman Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) relied on a little used interpretation of committee rules to move the legislation. Traditionally, two minority members are required to conduct committee business.
Boxer said that she passed the bill “in full accordance with long-standing committee and Senate rules.”
“This is not a procedure we wanted; it’s a procedure that’s available to us,” said Boxer. “The majority has to be able to do its work…otherwise the whole Senate could come to a screeching halt.”
Republicans called Boxer's move the “nuclear option,” warning that it violated decades of committee precedent.
“I am here to appeal to you and the members of the committee,” Sen. Jim Inhofe, the top Republican on the committee, said in a brief statement. “In the history of this committee, we have not been able to find a time when the bill has been marked up without minority.”
A Republican committee member visited the committee daily this week to deliver a short statement laying out GOP objections to the process.
Top Republican committee leaders and several moderate members — including climate bill leader South Carolina Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham — have sent letters this week in support of the boycott.
Eleven Democrats voted for the bill, enough to give the legislation a majority of the 19 members on the committee.
Montana Sen. Max Baucus was the only Democratic to vote against the bill, citing concerns about the agriculture provisions included in the legislation.
But Baucus vowed to use his post as chairman of the Senate Finance Committee to pass a climate bill.
“I’m going to work to get climate change legislation that gets 60 votes through the U.S. Senate and signed into law,” he said.
Pennsylvania Sen. Arlen Specter, a moderate Democrat, supported the legislation but said he plans to push for significant changes as the bill moves toward the floor.
“I think the bill could have been improved substantially, but procedurally we were prohibited from doing that,” he said.
EPW Committee rules state that opening a “business meeting” requires one-third of the members of the committee, including two members of the minority party.
But legislation can be approved by the committee with a simple majority of members, an exception Boxer could use to pass her bill. Boxer is also the final judge on any dispute over committee rules, a fact that would allow her to override any GOP objection to her process.
Republicans asked Boxer to delay the hearing by several weeks to allow the Environmental Protection Agency to conduct an additional study on the economic ramifications of the bill.
Boxer and committee Democrats dismissed the request as a delay tactic, saying that the agency had already completed sufficient analysis of the bill. On Tuesday, a top EPA official came to a hearing to answer questions from committee members. No Republicans attended.
“The absence of the Republicans during the EPA’s presentation was a clear message that their criticism of the EPA analysis was not a substantive one,” said Boxer.
Moderate members of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee on Tuesday signaled a tough battle ahead to win Senate approval of climate change legislation, even if the White House pours significant political capital into the fight.
Sen. Max Baucus (D-Mont.), who’s also chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, criticized the legislation sponsored by the environment committee’s chairwoman, Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.), and Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.), saying he had “overall concerns” about the proposal.
“We cannot afford the unmitigated impacts of climate change, but we also cannot afford the unmitigated effects of legislation,” Baucus said during the first in a series of climate change hearings this week before the Senate committee.
As one of the Senate’s most powerful moderate Democrats, Baucus is a particularly influential voice in the climate debate in which Democrats from coal and manufacturing states have raised concerns that the legislation unfairly favors electric utilities serving the coasts.
And as Finance Committee chairman, Baucus has a major stake in the financing of a cap-and-trade proposal. His committee plans to hold hearings on the legislation and is expected to take its own shot at the distribution of allocations, the heart of the proposal.
Baucus implied that the short-term emissions cuts mandated by Boxer and Kerry’s proposal were too steep for him and other moderate Democrats to support.
Some Democrats on the committee, though, said Baucus’s comments didn’t signal a major problem for the bill.
“So long as he’s willing to continue working with us — that’s a very good sign,” said Sen. Mark Udall (D-Colo.). “There’s been every indication there.”
The Senate bill would cut emissions 20 percent over 2005 levels by 2020. Legislation passed by the House in late June slashes emissions 17 percent during the same period.
Democrats from coal states, though, favor cutting emissions 14 percent to give the coal industry time to develop cleaner plants using carbon capture and sequestration technology.
“We cannot afford a first step that takes us further away from a conceivable consensus on climate change,” Baucus said.
Pennsylvania Sen. Arlen Specter, a moderate Democrat facing a tough reelection race next year, said he supports passing legislation but also has serious concerns, given his state’s dependence on coal and steel.
“When I hear concerns about jobs and higher costs for consumers, I’m very much concerned about that,” he told the panel.
Republicans and moderate Democrats have also advocated for the legislation to include funding to expand domestic oil exploration and nuclear power.
The emphasis on more traditional sources of energy could weaken the support of the committee’s more liberal members, who want to see greater backing to spur the development of renewable fuels.
“I sit around the committee, and all I hear is nuclear and coal,” said Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), who’d like more support for solar, wind and geothermal energy.
Moderate Republicans offered even less backing, though, and some similar complaints.
“One of my problems with this legislation is that the caps are unrealistic in terms of the availability of technology,” said Sen. George Voinovich (R-Ohio).
Voinovich’s reputation for bipartisan deal making and concerns about climate change have raised hopes that the retiring senator could be in play.
But on Tuesday, he issued a strident plea to slow the process. The Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee spent five months debating before approving its energy legislation last summer, and Voinovich would like Boxer’s committee to follow a similar timeline.
“Why are we trying to jam down this legislation now?” he asked. “Wouldn’t it be smarter to take our time and do it right?”
The committee’s more conservative Republicans see the legislation as a nonstarter. And sponsors will most likely need some bipartisan support to get the 60 votes needed to thwart any Republican-led filibuster on the Senate floor.
“This bill necessarily will raise the price of gasoline, electricity, food and just about everything else,” said Oklahoma Sen. Jim Inhofe, the committee’s ranking Republican.
Kerry, a lead sponsor of the legislation, contended that it would cover only 2 percent of businesses, exempting all small businesses that put out less than 25,000 tons of carbon dioxide a year.
“We have to be able to find it in our capacity to reduce pollution from 2 percent of America’s businesses that represent 75 percent of America’s pollution,” Kerry said.
Administration officials readily acknowledged that the legislation would undergo significant changes before it reached the Senate floor.
“This is the beginning of a process,” Interior Secretary Ken Salazar told reporters after his testimony Tuesday, along with four other top administration officials. “How this legislation ultimately comes together as legislation on the floor will be different than what we have today.”
The bill will get input from five other committees, Finance, Energy and Natural Resources, Agriculture, Commerce and Foreign Relations. And Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) will compile the final bill after all six committees complete their work.
Currently, there’s no timeline for the committees to complete their work.
“We’re going to have a meeting with the chairs. We’re going to try to discuss what’s possible, see where everybody can get together and be plausible and make sense, obviously trying to do it as fast as possible,” Kerry said.
As the Senate debates legislation, the Environmental Protection Agency is also moving forward with regulations to curb greenhouse gases across a wide swath of industries.
The agency is expected to release a final version of a rule finding that carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases are a danger to human health and welfare. The ruling will mandate that the agency begin regulating emissions under the Clean Air Act.
The EPA, however, would rather cut emissions through legislation than executive rule making.
“Even as the president and the members of his Cabinet move forward under existing authority, we continue urging Congress to pass a new clean energy law,” said EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson.
“Only new legislation can bring about the comprehensive and integrated changes that are needed to restore America’s economic health and keep the nation secure over the long term,” she said.
Energy Secretary Steven Chu, Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood and Jon Wellinghoff, chairman of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, also testified in favor of the bill.
A little noticed Environmental Protection Agency analysis shows that the pending climate-change bill in Congress would particularly benefit the states represented by its primary authors.
The analysis, obtained by The Washington Times, shows that the states that would benefit most from the climate legislation that passed the House in June include California and Massachusetts. The bill was co-authored by Rep. Henry A. Waxman, California Democrat, and Rep. Edward J. Markey, Massachusetts Democrat.
A spokeswoman for Mr. Waxman, who chairs the House Energy and Commerce Committee, said the EPA's analysis is preliminary and "has significant limitations" that fail to account for emissions from plants outside California that provide electricity to the state.
An aide to Mr. Markey said the bill was written to ensure "regulatory certainty," and was based on the input of electric utility sector "to best serve the entire industry across regional lines."
Critics see the analysis as another reason to go slow on legislation that would reduce greenhouse-gas emissions by establishing a new system of trading emission allowances called cap-and-trade.
The EPA analysis was included in the agency's response to inquiries by Sen. Russ Feingold, Wisconsin Democrat, about the House bill.
"I have heard concerns from my constituents about how the climate-change bill could unfairly impact Wisconsin," Mr. Feingold said in a statement. "The data from the EPA was requested as part of my effort to learn as much as possible about the bill and ways to improve it."
House lawmakers from Midwest and Plains states initially withheld support for the House bill because of worries that rural cooperatives and public utilities that rely on coal-fired power plants would get the least assistance, while the most help would go to large utilities with nuclear and renewable sources.
The EPA estimates provided to Mr. Feingold showed that utilities in coastal states would get the most free allowances handed out to comply with the House bill. California and New York would, under the House bill, be in line to get more than they needed, the EPA estimated. Massachusetts would get nearly all it needs.
The losers under the House-backed bill would be those states whose senators are leery of backing a similar bill by Sen. John Kerry, Massachusetts Democrat, and Sen. Barbara Boxer, California Democrat, based on fears that the bill will mean higher electricity prices to their constituents.
States like Iowa, Nebraska, Minnesota, Missouri, the Dakotas, Wisconsin, Ohio and Indiana get at best just 75 percent of the allowances they would need. The House bill would give allowances to utilities, factories, refiners and others to help them offset energy price increases expected under the law and to pay for renewable energy development.
EPA also told Mr. Feingold that its ability to calculate the maximum number of allowances that a utility would get would be based on complex calculations involving numerous factors.
"Any attempt to remove the impact of the cap and trade program on these factors and thus on total electricity costs would be speculative at best," EPA stated in the document.
The EPA, in a statement, noted that the analysis "does not accurately represent the allocations that individual states would actually receive under the bill," in part because a limit in the bill on excess allowances must be "refined before EPA could determine how to implement it." Still, the analysis has the potential to upend the careful compromise included in the House bill that was proposed by the Edison Electric Institute, the main utility lobby. Its formula would give out free allowances to utilities based equally on a utility's sales and emissions.
The so-called "50-50" deal is included in the Senate bill by Mr. Kerry and Mrs. Boxer.
The 50-50 deal has been under attack in the Senate by smaller Midwest utilities and rural electric cooperatives. They also say the Senate bill should be written to give out allowances based solely on emissions — a formula that would give California just 80.1 percent of the allowances it needs and would give 33 states, including a number in the Midwest states, higher percentages of needed allowances.
Waxman's spokeswoman said the plan "reflects a consensus recommendation developed by the Edison Electric Institute, which represents the investor-owned electric utilities. It balances the interests of consumers served by utilities that have high carbon emissions with the interests of consumers served by utilities that have already invested in low-carbon electricity generation."
Glenn English, the chief executive officerof the National Rural Electric Cooperative Association, said the analysis proves what the group has been saying since this spring about the House bill and the EEI deal.
"What EPA is saying is that anything other than an emissions-based approach on distributing allowances is unfair to regions of the country and creates disparities," and that it will create windfalls for utility investors. An EEI spokesman said the group has not seen the analysis and could not comment on it.
Mr. English said he believes the analysis will be taken seriously. But he also said investor-owned utilities are going to fight for the 50-50 deal. "What this really comes down to is those people who don't need the allowances but are going to gain a big windfall are probably putting a lot of pressure on the (Senate Environment and Public Works) committee and their senators, that this provision must be in the bill,"Mr. English added.
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