Yeah, I’m a little late on this
Senate leaders yesterday abruptly pulled back legislation that would have mandated major cuts in U.S. greenhouse-gas emissions after they came a dozen votes shy of ending a GOP filibuster.
Although the bill — sponsored by Sens. Joseph I. Lieberman (I-Conn.) and John W. Warner (R-Va.) — enjoyed bipartisan support, the week-long floor debate devolved into partisan bickering over which party was most responsive to the plight of Americans trying to cope with rising gas prices.
Good. I would rather they yell at each other then pass another massive feel good bill that will raise taxes and damage the economy, but do nothing.
Then we get some whining by Harry Reid. Yawn.
“As I suspected, reality hit the U.S. Senate when the economic facts of this bill were exposed,” Sen. James M. Inhofe (Okla.), the ranking Republican on the Environment and Public Works Committee, said in a statement. “When faced with the inconvenient truth of the bill’s impact on skyrocketing gas prices, very few Senators were willing to even debate this bill.”
I forget which blog mentioned it yesterday, but, if the bill is soooooooooooo important, why did Dingy Harry try and play games in limiting the debate, then yank it after 3 days?
“So here you have Democrats in Congress saying that this is the most important bill to face this Congress, and they weren’t even going to spend enough time to allow people to have any chance of talking about it or amending it,” Perino said.
Exactly.
The outcome highlighted the obstacles that will stand in the way of enacting meaningful cuts in greenhouse gases, even with a new president and Congress next year. The Lieberman-Warner bill would have required greenhouse gas emissions to be cut 18 percent below 2005 levels by 2020 and nearly 70 percent by mid-century, a significant reduction but still short of what most climate scientists say is needed to moderate global warming.
Why 2005? If they were serious, they would look to, say, 1990, or even 1979, as that is when the global temps started shooting up. 2005 is in the middle of a period of warmer temps that have been stagnet since 1998.
The bill was mostly a pie in the sky one, which yammered on about creating new energy sources, with no clear direction how, no idea of what, and that ignores current technology, such as nuclear. It’s dead for the moment, though.
On another note, I am rather disappointed in Elizabeth Dole in voting for colture. I can understand why she did it, as she is up for re-election, and we get more and more Northeastern liberals moving to North Carolina every week (it’s like they do not like the high taxes and way of life up there or something!). Still and all, bad Libby! And yeah, I have shot her a few emails expressing my displeasure.
