WashPost: Climate bill faces hurdles in Senate - DEMOCRATS DEEPLY SPLIT (November 2, 2009) - The climate-change bill that has been moving slowly through the Senate will face a stark political reality when it emerges for committee debate on Tuesday: With Democrats deeply divided on the issue, unless some Republican lawmakers risk the backlash for signing on to the legislation, there is almost no hope for passage. Like the measure adopted by the House, the legislation favors a cap-and-trade system that would issue permits for greenhouse gas emissions, gradually lower the amount of emissions allowed, and let companies buy and sell permits to meet their needs -- all without adding to the federal deficit, according to projections. But key Republicans are making their opposition clear, even as Sen. John F. Kerry (D-Mass.) has enlisted Sen. Lindsey O. Graham (S.C.) as his most visible GOP ally in gathering support for the bill. Sen. George V. Voinovich (Ohio), a member of the Environment and Public Works Committee who was initially seen as one of the few Republicans who might consider backing the majority, is helping lead the opposition. "Why are we trying to jam down this legislation now?" he asked during a hearing last week. "Wouldn't it be smarter to take our time and do it right?" He wrote Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lisa P. Jackson twice this summer to ask for a more detailed economic analysis of the House-passed climate legislation, and he has joined the other six Republicans on the committee in boycotting the climate bill's markup, scheduled for Tuesday. The measure has deeply divided Democrats. With states in the Midwest, South and Rocky Mountain West dependent on fossil fuels for energy, many senators are worried about the legislation's impact on industry and consumers. "I think at the end of the day, the people who turn the switch on at home will be disadvantaged," Sen. Ben Nelson (D-Neb.) told CNBC on Friday, explaining why he did not think the bill Kerry had sponsored along with Environment and Public Works Chairman Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) could pass.

E&E News Boxer pushes ahead with "Toxic" Maneuver (11/02/2009) - Chairwoman Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) plans to proceed under a rarely used interpretation of the committee's rules that allows her to start and finish the markup so long as a majority of the panel's members are present, rather than longstanding precedent requiring two minority members to be in attendance, according to sources on and off Capitol Hill. Boxer's justification for the move is that Republicans are trying to stall on a climate bill that they have no intention of voting for anyway. And with a 12-7 majority favoring Democrats, she does not need their support to report the bill favorably. "We believe that there's no reason for them to stay away," Boxer told reporters last week. "It'd be remarkably bad faith if they did."...But some question whether Boxer's efforts now could foretell trouble as Kerry tries to work with moderate Democrats and Republicans. A former Senate Democratic staffer warned that an end-run around the committee's process may not be the best strategy when appealing to swing-vote senators. "That product is totally toxic," the former staffer said. "It's basically worthless." Wheeler, the former EPW Republican staff director, said that Boxer's move to bypass longstanding rules could hurt the Democrats' chances on the floor for winning the votes of committee members like Voinovich and Alexander, as well as GOP moderates off the committee like Sens. Susan Collins and Olympia Snowe of Maine, and Judd Gregg of New Hampshire. "They all believe in the process and minority rights," Wheeler said. "The fastest way to ensure that no Republican ever supports this is to do something like that."

No matter how many times Congress debates it, and no matter how environmentalists couch it, cap-and-trade will do virtually nothing to stop global warming, and cap-and-trade, as Rep. John Dingell (D-Mich.) said, "is a tax, and a great big one." These are the fundamentals in the cap-and-trade debate, and Republicans must refocus on them.

We need to remind the American public, for example, that the 1,400-page Waxman-Markey monstrosity is a monument to big government that will make food, gasoline and electricity more expensive, increase mandates on small businesses, and increase the size and reach of the federal bureaucracy - all while doing nothing to affect climate change.

The Oklahoma congressional delegation expressed concern Thursday that a federal agency is moving away from a successful voluntary program tied to Tulsa's water quality.

In a letter to Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lisa Jackson, the delegation said Oklahoma's $9 million investment in the program since 2003 has resulted in a 66 percent reduction in phosphorus levels in Beaty Creek.

That creek is a tributary to the Eucha-Spavinaw watershed, the primary water supply for Tulsa.

Moving to assuage concerns about the potential costs of capping U.S. greenhouse gas emissions, Senate Environment and Public Works Committee Chair Barbara Boxer has included an allowance "price collar" provision in climate change legislation she is drafting that would establish maximum and minimum prices for emission allowances in the early years of the cap-and-trade program the bill would create, The Energy Daily has learned.

The draft legislation, which Boxer (D-Calif.) plans to introduce at the end of the month, would establish an initial allowance price ceiling of $28 per metric ton of carbon dioxide and a price floor of $11, with the prices adjusted upwards annually thereafter, according to a source familiar with the measure.

Under the provision, if heavy demand pushed allowance market prices above the $28 ceiling, the government would borrow allowances from future years and sell them to regulated entities at the ceiling price, a move that in theory would reduce demand for allowances and lower prices.

The minimum, or floor, price would ensure that government-administered allowance auctions generate sufficient revenues to fund climate change adaptation efforts, for example, and other climate change-related public benefits.

Details of Boxer's draft emerged as Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) signaled Tuesday that climate change legislation is unlikely to come to the Senate floor until late in the year given the Senate's crowded schedule, which includes health care and financial services reform legislation and a number of appropriations bills.

Reid's pronouncement notwithstanding, Boxer is expected to hold hearings on her legislation in early October and move it through her committee later that month.

Boxer signaled in early August she was considering including a price collar in her legislation, a move clearly aimed at addressing concerns by a number of Democratic senators over the past two months that limiting carbon emissions could harm the U.S. economy by driving up the costs of energy and consumer products.

Cap and trade may be flopping around like a dying fish in Congress, but the Obama Administration isn't about to let the annoyance of democratic consent interfere with its climate ambitions. Almost as bad is the new evidence that it understands how damaging its carbon regulations and taxes will be and is pressing ahead anyway.

The White House is currently reviewing the Environmental Protection Agency's April "endangerment finding" that as a matter of law CO2 is a pollutant that threatens the public's health and must therefore be subject to regulation under the Clean Air Act. Such a rulemaking would let the EPA impose the ossified command-and-control regulatory approach of the 1970s across the entire economy, even if Democrats never get around to passing a cap-and-tax bill.

Yet a curious twist is buried in the EPA's draft rule. The trade press is reporting that the agency thinks it enjoys the discretion to target the new rules only to major industrial sources of carbon emissions, such as power plants, refineries, factories and the like. This so-called "tailoring rule" essentially rewrites clear statutory language of the Clean Air Act by bureaucratic decree.

Aug. 18 (Bloomberg) -- Cap-and-trade legislation to limit U.S. carbon dioxide emissions has "gotten out of control" and needs to be scaled back in Congress, said former Democratic Senator Timothy Wirth.

"The Republicans are right -- it's a cap-and-tax bill," Wirth, a climate-change negotiator during President Bill Clinton's administration, said in an Aug. 14 interview. "That's what it is because they are raising revenue to do all sorts of things, especially to take care of the coal industry, and it makes no sense."

A system to cap carbon emissions and then create a market for the trading of pollution allowances is the centerpiece of President Barack Obama's proposal to fight global warming. Wirth, who helped craft a successful emissions-trading market two decades ago that cut sulfur-dioxide pollution causing acid rain, is among Democrats questioning House-passed legislation set to be taken up next month in the Senate.

"I'm not critical of cap-and-trade," said Wirth, head of the UN Foundation, a philanthropy established in 1998 with $1 billion from medial mogul Ted Turner. "But it has to be used in a targeted and disciplined way, and what has happened is it's gotten out of control."

Wirth, who represented Colorado in the Senate, says the House-passed plan is "too broad across the economy." Instead of capping carbon pollution generally, the measure should focus solely on coal-fired power plants, he said.

Aug. 14 (Bloomberg) -- 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."

The resistance by Lincoln and her Senate colleagues undercuts President Barack Obama's effort to win passage of legislation that would cap carbon dioxide emissions and establish a market for trading pollution allowances, said Peter Molinaro, the head of government affairs for Midland, Michigan- based Dow Chemical Co., which supports the measure.

"Doing these energy provisions by themselves might make it more difficult to move the cap-and-trade legislation," said Molinaro, who is based in Washington. "In this town if you split two measures, usually the second thing never gets done."

The House passed cap-and-trade legislation in June.

Two powerful Senate panels are at odds over which will be the lead author on perhaps the most critical piece of the global warming bill.

Both the Environment and Public Works Committee and the Finance Committee are staking claim to the distribution of what is projected to be hundreds of billions of dollars in emission allowances for a range of industries, adding another layer of complexity to a legislative debate already rife with trap doors.

For now, the leaders of the two committees are playing nice -- at least publicly. They say they will work together on the legislation, and any disputes ultimately will get decided by Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.).

But sources on and off Capitol Hill say Reid wants nothing to do with a parliamentary struggle that pits EPW Chairwoman Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) against Finance Chairman Max Baucus (D-Mont.), and he is pleading with them to resolve any differences should the legislation get the green light for a floor vote later this year.

WASHINGTON - Ten moderate Senate Democrats from states dependent on coal and manufacturing sent a letter to President Obama on Thursday saying they would not support any climate change bill that did not protect American industries from competition from countries that did not impose similar restraints on climate-altering gases.

The letter warned that strong actions to limit emissions of carbon dioxide and other heat-trapping gases would add to the cost of goods like steel, cement, paper and aluminum. Unless other countries adopt similar emission limits, the senators warned, jobs will migrate overseas and foreign manufacturers will have a decided cost advantage.