The Senate Environment and Public Works Committee reported out a climate change bill on Thursday despite a boycott by Republican members, who had required a complete analysis of the measure before participating in the committee debate.
The Republicans bailed out because they wanted a full EPA analysis of the bill before proceeding. Neither Committee Chair Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) nor ranking member James Inhofe (R-Okla.) have put up press releases about Boxer’s maneuver yet. However, Inhofe did issue a statement:
"The Republicans offered a clear path forward to a bipartisan markup, but it was summarily rejected by Chairman Boxer.[Boxer] decided to ignore the entreaties of all 6 ranking members from Senate committees with some share of jurisdiction over climate change legislation, as well as leading moderates in the Senate. Her action signals the death knell for the Kerry Boxer bill," he added.
We’ll see about that death knell. After all, the Finance Committee will have a run at it – Max Baucus (D - Montana), who chairs that committee, was the one vote against it in the Energy committee – and all the Senators will be able to festoon it with amendments once it hits the floor.
But for now, the bill, including the rather empty nuclear title, is the same as when the committee presented it for hearings. We await the next move.
Sen. James Inhofe would like to make a point.
Comments
Is it too much to ask for the EPA to produce a cost analysis when you consider the effect, in terms of energy prices and cost to consumers, of this bill?
Not surprisingly, the minority party didn't think the majority party would stoop to a minor technical allowance in the Rules to advance this bill to the floor. Such a move by Republicans would garner howls of protest from the Left, but now it's just shrugged off as the "cost" of being in the minority.
Brute power on display in the formerly greatest deliberative body in the world.
Abdication is a better description of what happened here. The Republicans cannot function as an opposition if they don't turn up for the debate or the vote. I wonder if they still got paid?
Again, this is partisan territory, no point in being shy about it. So far, Democrats have canceled both Yucca and re-processing, there is no nuclear waste storage solution, so it should not be part of the climate bill.
Any facts to back that up or is that just an opinion?
there is no nuclear waste storage solution, so it should not be part of the climate bill.
What do you think the nuclear industry is doing right now with its used fuel? Is our management of used fuel in such a dire situation that it needs immediate attention?
Right now, used fuel is stored safely and securely in spent fuel pools and dry casks that are designed to last a very long time and withstand nature's wrath. To me, that doesn't sound like we need to drop all other issues to solve how we manage our used fuel.
If you were to evaluate the votes on, say, Yucca Mountain with respect to party affiliation, I think you would find that the situation is too complex to accommodate such a binary. There's no other way to explain the fact that the repository program has easily survived every vote in Congress (and in fact received some of its highest funding levels under the Clinton administration and Energy Secretary Bill Richardson).
Moreover, as far as the Yucca Mountain Project is concerned, I can tell you personally that it has not been "canceled." Despite the brutal and frankly unethical funding cuts orchestrated by Harry Reid, and despite Energy Secretary Stephen Chu's betrayal of his former Berkeley colleagues in LBNL's Earth Science Division, who contributed essential components of the Project's technical baseline, the YMP continues to be the law of the land (i.e., mandated by the Nuclear Waste Policy Act).
As such, the licensing proceeding continues at NRC, with DOE and its contractors submitting responses to NRC requests for additional information and providing support for legal contentions brought by opposing parties. Rest assured that, unless the NWPA is amended, any cancellation of the YMP will be in direct contravention to the law, which no one from any party should be proud of.
And no matter how much you convince yourself that nuclear power is "dangerous," it will remain true that our nation currently has around 60,000 metric tons of nuclear waste it must store safely and securely. Since you seem to use the notion of "no storage solution" as an implied argument against the continued use of nuclear power, what solution would you suggest on behalf of the 160 million American who currently live within 50 miles of the nuclear waste we have already produced? Too many of my fellow Democrats are unwilling to address this issue honestly.