Boehner is on right now going page by page...



GOP stalls climate-change vote
By: Lisa Lerer and Patrick O'Connor
June 25, 2009 08:43 PM EST

House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-Ohio) slowed Democrats’ attempt to pass a sweeping climate-change legislation Friday evening, reading page-by-page through a 300-page Democratic amendment before allowing a roll call vote.

It was a House version of a Senate filibuster – and a way to protest the addition of the 300-page managers’ amendment at 3 a.m. Friday.

Republicans say Democrats are ramming their climate-change legislation through the House without enough time for members to read the bill — let alone to understand it — all in violation of their promises about creating a more transparent legislative process.

Rep. Joe Barton (R-Tex.), running the debate for his party, asked repeatedly Friday afternoon if there was even a copy of the current version of the bill anywhere in the House chamber. Democratic Rep. Ellen Tauscher – sitting in the speaker’s chair although she’s already been confirmed as Obama’s undersecretary of State for Arms Control and International Security — repeatedly dodged the question.

Rep. Ed Markey (D-Mass.), one of the bill’s sponsors, finally rose to say that a single copy of the current version of the bill was available at the speaker’s desk and on the Internet, which members would have to leave the floor to access.

But that wasn’t enough for Boehner, whose move threatened to postpone a vote well into the evening – on a day that has already seen hours of contentious debate.

Rep. Geoff Davis, a Republican from Kentucky, said earlier in the day that the cap-and-trade bill represented the “economic colonization of the heartlandâ€