6 GOP ranking members urge Boxer to slow down
Six senior Senate Republicans warned the chairwoman of the Environment and Public Works Committee today to slow down in her bid to move global warming legislation, saying she risks severely damaging chances of passing the bill on the floor. The ranking members of the six committees with jurisdiction over the climate bill delivered a letter to EPW Chairwoman Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) saying they were "deeply troubled by the failure to accommodate" Republican requests for more information about the proposal. They also questioned Boxer's decision to begin marking up the bill tomorrow "without sufficient opportunity to address the bipartisan concerns raised over the course of legislative hearings on the measure."
A quarrel over a Senate chairwoman's effort to put climate change legislation on a faster track threatens to dash hopes for bipartisan support of the measure on the floor..."It's not the best gesture," said Chelsea Maxwell, a partner at the Clark Group LLC, an environmental lobbying firm, and a senior climate adviser to former Sen. John W. Warner of Virginia (1979-2009), last year's lead Republican cosponsor of a climate change bill. "It's going to make it very difficult to convince the fence-sitting Republicans that they will be treated with respect if they come to the table."
Barbara Boxer may not only force her climate bill through the Environment and Public Works Committee without any Republican votes; aides say she could also do it without any Republicans in the room at all. Boxer (D-Calif.) could exploit a loophole in committee rules that will allow her to approve the bill with a simple majority of the 12 Democrats on the committee, even if no Republicans are present. Republicans have vowed to boycott the proceeding. This end run around Republicans - ignoring the usual rules that require at least two Republicans to be present for a quorum - could further hinder the chances for an already troubled cap-and-trade bill. "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," wrote the top GOP senators on the six committees with jurisdiction over climate change legislation. Regardless of what happens in her own committee, Boxer's bill will most likely undergo a significant overhaul in other committees. But her freelancing on the process would only give Republicans one more easy argument against the legislation, Democratic aides say. "She poisoned the waters," said one Democratic aide.
- WASHINGTON - Democratic leaders of a key Senate committee on Monday vowed to forge ahead with climate change legislation despite a planned boycott by Republicans on the panel. Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-Calif., said the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee she heads would begin working on the global warming bill today - with or without the Republicans...Any maneuver by Boxer to advance the bill without Republicans in the room could further polarize relations on the committee and jeopardize efforts by Kerry and Sen. Joseph Lieberman, an independent from Connecticut, to broker a bipartisan compromise on the legislation. "I'd urge everyone to come back to the table, re-engage and work together to move the process forward," Kerry said, noting that previous congressional efforts to combat global warming have been bipartisan.
Moving ahead with a committee vote without the EPA analyses or resolving some of the concerns raised by both GOP and Democratic members, "would severely damage, rather than help, the chances of enacting changes to our nation's climate and energy policies," the ranking Republicans said in the letter. Environment committee Republicans "are not opposed to a markup, only on holding one before we have a full economic analysis," said Matt Dempsey, a spokesman for the GOP members on the panel, in an email over the weekend. Few political analysts believe the Senate will this year consider a climate bill on the chamber floor, as a raft of other committees also want their chance to craft the legislation and other major priorities are vying for the Senate's attention. Lawmakers first have to finish the health-care debate, and there are financial-services restructuring and several appropriations bills to consider.
But she did not back down from her warning that the markup will proceed with or without Republicans, although she declined to discuss how she would work around the committee rules. "If we have to go that route, we'll talk about how the committee would do that," she said. Despite the partisan theatrics, it remains unlikely that whatever Boxer's committee passes will end up on the Senate floor until next year. Democratic aides have said part of the reason Boxer has pushed forward with a markup months before possible floor consideration is a result of leadership's desire to have committee work on her version wrapped up while the nation's attention is focused on health care reform. As was the case of the health care bill - when the Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee moved an aggressively liberal version during last spring's economic crisis - Democrats would like to move Boxer's version now to allow other committees time to work on more moderate approaches, with an eye toward a final compromise being cobbled together by Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) sometime next year.  Nevertheless, the dust-up on the EPW Committee clearly rattled lawmakers who are working on a number of other bipartisan climate bills, including Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.), who is leading a bipartisan effort with Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.).
