U.S. Senator George V. Voinovich sent the following letter to EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson today questioning the need for, and motive behind, this afternoon's repetitive EPA briefing of the EPW Committee:

Dear Administrator Jackson:

I understand that your staff will be briefing the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works today on the agency's assessment of S. 1733, the Kerry-Boxer bill. I assume the purpose of this briefing is three-fold: to allow EPA to explain why its work on S. 1733 provides enough detail for the committee to move forward with consideration of the bill; to allow EPA to explain that there are only minor differences between S. 1733 and H.R. 2454, the Waxman-Markey bill; and to allow EPA to explain why its analysis of Waxman-Markey addresses all of the concerns expressed by many of my colleagues and me.

I appreciate the Chairman's willingness to provide additional time to deliberate over EPA's work before proceeding to a markup. Additionally, I appreciate your staff providing the committee with an explanation of its work. However, I question the need for this briefing. The issue before us is not whether we understand EPA's 38-page discussion paper on S. 1733 and its current analysis of Waxman-Markey. Rather, the issue is that the committee lacks a full analysis, with modeling runs, of S. 1733. Having a briefing does nothing to change that.

The top Republicans on six committees with jurisdiction over the Senate climate bill have sent a letter to Environment and Public Works committee Chairman Barbara Boxer urging her to back off of her decision to force the bill through the committee without Republican participation.

Democrats will need bipartisan support to overcome a possible filibuster of the legislation when it reaches the full Senate. Sen. John Kerry, (D-Mass.), and Lindsay Graham, (R-S.C.) have been working to build GOP support for the bill.

But Boxer's push to pass the bill out of committee, warn Republicans, could backfire.

"From our viewpoint, such an approach would severely damage, rather than help, the chances of enacting changes to our nation's climate and energy policies," the Republican senators wrote

Oklahoma Sen. Jim Inhofe stands out like a heretic in a world in which political correctness has become its own religion. One of the chief tenets of this new faith is that manmade global warming will be the ruination of us all. Inhofe is on a one man crusade to debunk the idea.

It doesn't matter that the "global warming" vocabulary is subtly being switched to "climate change," and for a very good reason. There is some question about how much, if any, the earth is still warming despite ever increasing carbon emissions.

On Tuesday, October 27, 2009, Sen. Voinovich questioned Administrator Jackson on whether EPA had conducted a full analysis of the Kerry-Boxer cap-and-trade legislation.

Voinovich: Secretary Jackson, you and I and our staffs have had an ongoing disagreement about the thoroughness of your, doing your analysis, and in your report about the impacts 1733 you state, "Because of these many similarities and the relatively small differences between the two bills, it is likely that a full analysis of 1733 would show economic impacts very similar to H.R. 2454." The fact is that you have not done a complete analysis, is that correct?

Jackson: We have not run the full economic modeling, sir.

In today's hearing, the EPW Committee heard a few key things about Kerry-Boxer:

- It will undermine the global competitiveness of America's manufacturers, and give a huge competitive advantage to countries such as China and India.

- It will weaken America's national security because it will weaken the economy, and thus compromise our ability to protect the country against foreign threats.

- It is an energy tax that will make consumers pay higher prices for electricity.

WASHINGTON, DC – Testifying before the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee today, Barry Hart, Chief Executive Officer of the Association of Missouri Electric Cooperatives and Dustin Johnson, Commissioner of the South Dakota Public Utilities Commission both raised serious concerns with regional disparities associated with the Kerry-Boxer cap-and-trade bill. Senator James Inhofe (R – Okla.) expressed his concerns that Oklahomans would pay a much higher cost and asked the two witnesses to respond.

Senator Inhofe: “Since I’m also in the heartland, in the Midwest, I’d like to have both of you respond to this. Because I’ve seen the same charts, I’ve seen how we’re going to be treated. Oklahoma is right between you guys. So would you like to, can you help me understand why we still believe that our costs would be greater?”