Executive Branch Perspectives
A recent update posted at the SugarCane Blog pointed to a radio interview that President Barack Obama had with WNAX Farm Director Michelle Rook on Tuesday. The President discussed a number of issues including the administration’s rural tour, biofuels and the Waxman-Markey climate bill.
To listen to a portion of Tuesday’s interview with the President, just click here (MP3-5:14).
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Climate Change: House Reflections, Politics and Senate Action
After the House of Representatives narrowly passed climate legislation on Friday, news articles continue to examine issues associated with the bill’s advancement.
John M. Broder reported in today’s New York Times that, “As the most ambitious energy and climate-change legislation ever introduced in Congress made its way to a floor vote last Friday, it grew fat with compromises, carve-outs, concessions and out-and-out gifts intended to win the votes of wavering lawmakers and the support of powerful industries.
“The deal making continued right up until the final minutes, with the bill’s co-author Representative Henry A. Waxman, Democrat of California, doling out billions of dollars in promises on the House floor to secure the final votes needed for passage.
“The bill was freighted with hundreds of pages of special-interest favors, even as environmentalists lamented that its greenhouse-gas reduction targets had been whittled down.”
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Climate Change
Bloomberg writers Lorraine Woellert and Simon Lomax reported yesterday that, “U.S. House Democrats cheered when they won a vote to impose the nation’s first limits on greenhouse-gas emissions. Senate Democrats didn’t join the party.
“‘They don’t have my vote yet,’ said Democratic Senator Sherrod Brown of Ohio. ‘In the Senate this bill will not pass unless Midwestern Democratic senators support it in large numbers.’
“The hard-won 219-212 vote on June 26 to move a climate bill through the House was just a first step on a difficult legislative path. Several climate measures are being crafted in the Senate, where the regional and philosophical differences that dogged the House measure are even more sharply defined.”
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Political Focus as Climate Bill Goes to the Senate
Climate change legislation that passed the House on Friday, and is now headed to the Senate, was a key topic on yesterday’s Sunday morning television news programs.
An article posted yesterday at CQPolitics.com reported that, “Republicans continued Sunday to hammer the House-passed energy bill, calling it a ‘job-killer’ and one that will bring a ‘light-switch tax’ while a White House adviser countered that the GOP was using ‘inaction as a strategy’ to combat the nation’s energy problems.
“‘We’re trying to solve a problem that has languished for a decade, the problem of energy that has bedeviled us for a long time,’ presidential adviser David Axelrod said on ABC’s ‘This Week.’ ‘And they’re talking about how they can use it as an issue, inaction as somehow a strategy. And that’s not a strategy.’”
To listen to Mr. Axelrod’s analysis on the climate bill from yesterday’s “This Week” program, just click here (MP3-2:57).
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Bill Passes
John M. Broder reported in today’s New York Times that, “The House passed legislation on Friday intended to address global warming and transform the way the nation produces and uses energy.
“The vote was the first time either house of Congress had approved a bill meant to curb the heat-trapping gases scientists have linked to climate change. The legislation, which passed despite deep divisions among Democrats, could lead to profound changes in many sectors of the economy, including electric power generation, agriculture, manufacturing and construction.
“The bill’s passage, by 219 to 212, with 44 Democrats voting against it, also established a marker for the United States when international negotiations on a new climate change treaty begin later this year.”
Mr. Broder added that, “President Obama hailed the House passage of the bill as ‘a bold and necessary step.’ He said in a statement that he looked forward to Senate action that would send a bill to his desk ‘so that we can say, at long last, that this was the moment when we decided to confront America’s energy challenge and reclaim America’s future.’”
However, today’s Times article pointed out that, “As difficult as House passage proved, it is just the beginning of the energy and climate debate in Congress. The issue now moves to the Senate, where political divisions and regional differences are even more stark.”
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Posted by Keith Good • July, 2, 2009 • 4:28 am 