By Dan Calabrese ——Bio and Archives--November 30, 2015
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Looking for leverage, critics of the president’s climate agenda have zeroed in on the president’s goal of directing $3 billion – including $500 million in the near-term – for the U.N. Green Climate Fund, which would help developing nations deal with climate change. Ahead of the president’s trip, dozens of lawmakers warned the president: No vote, no money. “Without Senate approval, there will be no money – period,” Sen. John Barrasso, R-Wyo., said at a hearing last week, stressing that any agreement with legally binding requirements must come before the Senate for a vote. He and Sen. Jim Inhofe, R-Okla., chairman of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, sent a letter to Obama signed by more than three-dozen senators likewise urging the president to have his special envoy relay to developing nations’ representatives that Congress “will not be forthcoming” with the Green Climate Fund money absent a Senate vote. In addition, Inhofe joined Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin of West Virginia and Republican Sen. Roy Blunt of Missouri in introducing a resolution calling for the Senate to have a say in any climate agreement. Republicans generally argue that any deal with legally binding elements should be handled like a treaty, and subject to Senate ratification. The Obama administration, though, has given varying statements on how it views any potential pact. Secretary of State John Kerry rattled European officials when he was quoted earlier this month in the Financial Times saying any agreement was “definitively not going to be a treaty.” French President Hollande bristled at the notion that a deal would not be legally binding and was quoted saying if that’s the case, “there won’t be an agreement.”
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