Thread: Senate action on climate bill seems doomed

Senate action on climate bill seems doomed

By H. JOSEF HEBERT – 17 hours ago

WASHINGTON (AP) — A Senate bill to cut greenhouse gases and address global warming is heading toward almost certain defeat after nearly a week of stalemate and partisan bickering. Each side accuses the other of obstruction, trickery and political games.

As a result, it will be up to the next Congress and President Bush's successor to deal with this most important environmental issue. Both presidential candidates, Democrat Barack Obama and Republican John McCain, have promised to pursue mandatory pollution reductions to reduce the risk of climate change.

Supporters have concluded there is virtually no chance for the 60 votes needed to break a Republican filibuster, several senators told The Associated Press. They spoke on condition of anonymity because efforts continued to win support for the legislation.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., has set a vote for noon EDT Friday to try to overcome a GOP filibuster on the 492-page bill. He has pledged to pull the bill if it does not meet the 60-vote threshold.

The measure would require power plants, refineries and factories to reduce their carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases by about 19 percent by 2020 and by 71 percent by midcentury. Along with capping emissions, it would establish a pollution allowance trading system to ease the transition from fossil fuel use and help people pay energy bills.

The legislation has been in trouble from the start.

A GOP filibuster threat prevented Democrats from moving quickly at the beginning of the week to consider amendments. On Wednesday, the Republican leader, Sen. Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, required that all 492 pages be read into the record — an almost unheard of move that took 8 1/2 hours, ending at 9:45 p.m.

McConnell said he did so because of a dispute over judicial nominations. Reid saw it as stonewalling and an attempt to scuttle the legislation. He moved to essentially block Republican amendments on the bill and set the Friday deadline.

At a news conference Thursday, the leading sponsors said they had not given up.

"We're going to do everything we can. I've never said we've got 60 votes," said Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-Calif. But her tone was one of resignation.

"This is a road map," she said, adding it will provide to the next president "where they have allies" and where might be the pitfalls.

Sen. John Warner, R-Va., said he had "done the best I can" to get the message out to fellow Republicans to support the bill on national security grounds. About five Republicans had agreed to join him.

But some Democrats who had indicted they would back the bill with some changes drop away after it became clear they would not have a chance to offer their amendments.

McConnell blamed Reid for cutting off GOP opportunities to offer amendments and insisted Republicans were ready to consider the legislation for weeks. The Senate spent five weeks on the Clean Air Act in 1990, an equally complex bill, he said.

"We welcome this debate," McConnell told reporters. "If this is the most important issue facing the planet, it is ludicrous to think we're going to do this in four days with no amendments."

Democrats countered that Republicans all along had sought to undermine the bill, which most GOP senators strongly oppose.

"You can't have a more important issue to be dealing with on the floor of the Senate," said Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass. Taking aim Republicans, he said the deliberations had been "reduced to trickery and gimmicks and parliamentary games."

Sen. Joe Lieberman, the Connecticut independent who is a key sponsor, bemoaned the legislation's "unnatural ending."

http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5hNv- ... gD9142K1O0

The measure would require power plants, refineries and factories to reduce their carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases by about 19 percent by 2020 and by 71 percent by midcentury. Along with capping emissions, it would establish a pollution allowance trading system to ease the transition from fossil fuel use and help people pay energy bills.

Isn't this one of the many reasons companies left America and went to China and such? Because of no restrictions. I remember when we were the biggest polluters......now we aren't. Not because we fixed anything but because the factories and such just went somewhere else. Until it's "global" and just as costly in every nation as it is here.....they'll just keep on moving where the best deal and least restrictions are.

While we stopped having children to control population, and China has a 1 child limit....others are breeding like rabbits. While we were trying to reuse and recycle, they have made more un-reuseable products (supposid toxic results for re-using plastic bottles etc) and major appliances that fall apart 90x's faster than they did before to keep us buying. They change phones and i-pods every year to keep people buying "things" without regard to the un-necessary waste or the real need for the up-grade. The creamed us for toxic substances yet now import more than we ever had. Extras have now become needs to function in this society......expectations are beyond what people can handle successfully, and they wonder why people drink, do drugs, are stressed, depressed, sick, angry, violent and otherwise pretty un-happy. The land they told us to preserve for our future, some rich person bought and built on....so we can bring in millions and millions of foreign people to make up the so-called people shortage that we were told was over-population that we controlled? It makes no sense what-so-ever and we did it their way, just for them to un-do it all. None of this is worth anything unless it's global and even then.....who the heck do they think we are to be able to control mother nature? Just another way to suck people dry of their hard earned money for nothing.

CrazyBird said

The land they told us to preserve for our future, some rich person bought and built on....so we can bring in millions and millions of foreign people to make up the so-called people shortage that we were told was over-population that we controlled? It makes no sense what-so-ever and we did it their way, just for them to un-do it all. None of this is worth anything unless it's global and even then.....who the heck do they think we are to be able to control mother nature? Just another way to suck people dry of their hard earned money for nothing.

Bingo! We did it their way and now I guess they were wrong so now they must lead us down another "wrong" path.

I'm tired of hearing whats good for us and then the powers that be do the exact opposite while claiming we're the problem and they must take ours. Pure Bunk!

While Mother Nature is from God, The politicians are trying to replace her with Big Mother, and it just ain't working, just like Big Brother and Big Daddy hasn't worked. All it does is undermine human beings and treats them as lab rats, not People.

The government already has Big Brother to sneak around and spy on you. Big Daddy has replaced the Fathers because of a few bad Fathers and now they want Big Mother, the one that tells you how to eat, when to eat and how much. What a joke. I suggest these politicians are the ones that need nannies to watch over their activities and tell them, time for a long nap or time out in the corner. oh, and don't start another big mess until you've cleaned up the last one.

We just have to keep our eyes on them politicians because you know they can sneak this in under the darkness of night in just a few minutes.

Basically this whole agenda would create a an official world government that would control everything. The control freaks that control everything would be the chairs of this global corporation that would suck the money from the tax payers and funnel it striaght to their corporations of interest. This is about nothing more than a world governing body which is a pass the buck of responsibility when somebody wants to challenge something. If all countries were involved then we'd have to go through them to get changes done and we shouldn't have to go through another country or countries to change things that effect us here and maybe not there. Like I said, its a pass the buck circle of governments that make it hard to bust up the conglomerations or even step out of it if we don't like it. Of course in reality we could do anything we wanted but once the global government is set and we do that, they will make us pay big time. This is exactly why we don't need globalism and all the garbage that comes with it. There is already a world government but they want to show themselves and show they're mighty power and identify themselves for all to see.

All we gotta do is ask ourselves is our lives better now than 10 or 20 years ago? And we surely know what they have been telling us and are telling us is pure junk. Thats why I can't believe how many people fall for the government lies, because thats exactly what it is. It is intentional misleading lies. If this nation had a 100 trillion dollar surplus and the citizens are disreguarded and treated like nothing, make crappy wages and can't get ahead in their lives then that 100 trillion dollars might as well be burned. Sooner or later something will burn, the question is, what will it be?