Graham withdraws support for climate legislation
By Juliet Eilperin
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, April 25, 2010; A03
The effort to enact comprehensive climate and energy legislation this year suffered a critical blow Saturday when Sen. Lindsey O. Graham (S.C.), the key Republican proponent of the bill, withdrew his support because of what he said was a “cynical political” decision by Democrats to advance immigration legislation first.
The move forced the other two authors of the climate and energy bill, Sens. John F. Kerry (D-Mass.) and Joseph I. Lieberman (I-Conn.), to cancel a much-anticipated news conference planned for Monday at which they were to unveil the plan they negotiated with Graham.
Graham, who spent weeks working with Sen. Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.) on an immigration measure that will appeal to both parties, wrote in an open letter Saturday to leaders of the climate effort, “Moving forward on immigration — in this hurried, panicked manner — is nothing more than a cynical political ploy.”
Late last week, Senate Majority Leader Harry M. Reid (D-Nev.) raised the idea of bringing up immigration legislation before an energy bill, and President Obama on Friday criticized Arizona’s tough new immigration law and said Congress must act on immigration or risk leaving the door open to “irresponsibility by others.”
In an interview, Graham said he has become convinced that Democrats have decided to push for an immigration overhaul in an effort to mobilize Hispanic voters, a key political bloc, and that only a focused effort on a climate and energy bill could ensure its passage.
Democrats denied that election-related considerations were driving the focus on immigration, and the White House, Reid, and Kerry and Lieberman said they would continue to press ahead with the climate and energy effort.
Even so, Graham’s departure greatly undermines Democrats’ prospects of picking up the handful of Republican votes needed for passage. “If Senator Graham leaves the effort, a long shot becomes a no-shot,” said Joe Stanko, who heads up government relations for the law firm Hunton & Williams and represents several industries that would face new federal regulation under a climate bill.
more here at WaPo
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Joe Romm must be having a conniption fit about right now.
Brianp (08:18:25) :
As a Canadian I don’t quite understand what this really means. Does this kill it or is just a political move
As a Canadian, you should be quite familiar with political moves 🙂
Seriously, yes it is a nakedly political move as the Dems are seeking around for a way to avoid anihilation in the mid-terms in November. I don’t see how they can create 10 million new Dem voters, by amnesty for illegal immigrants, in time.
But, it is still good news. One might say they are “Doing it right on the wrong side of town” 🙂
If Washington, DC, is comatose, Arizona has the right idea to act on their illegal immigration problem but they’re playing into the hands of the Democrats. The cynic in me understands why Obama and the Democrats are tackling the immigration issue. They need votes to overcome the potential loss of seats in the House and Senate and they hope to counter the loss with new Hispanic voters.
Cap and Trade Treason (No body can say it better than Alan Caruba)
http://factsnotfantasy.blogspot.com/2010/04/cap-and-trade-treason.html
*sigh* this has nothing to do with global warming, but everything to do with politics!
The Democrats needed to make up for their losses to independents & moderate Republicans, so the move to immigration makes sense as it stokes up their base of Hispanic voters.
Brilliant, actually, as energy/cap & trade had no chance of passing the Senate due to coal-state, mining union Democratic opposition. After the blown-out oil well in the Gulf, you can kiss “drill, baby, drill” good-bye from this administration.
Don’t worry, the Obama administration has always held the EPA’s Endangerment Finding in their back pocket. That’s how they’ll pull it off, through direct regulation of carbon dioxide. Watch for it.
I live in a heavily Republican region. Nevertheless, I have written my Republican Congressmen to withdraw support for Lindsey Graham, John McCain, and other RINOs in the party. Even though they are not my Congressmen, mine do have a say in the party. I would urge all of you who can to do the same. I would hasten to add that I do respect John McCain and his service to our country, but it is time for him to retire. He espouses too many liberal-oriented ideas for my taste.
Sorry to tell you this but President Obama isn’t waiting for Cap N Trade. He is already doing whatever he wants through the EPA.
Weather Constitutional procedures are followed before he acts on his program doesn’t matter to him. It seems the Constitution is part of the ‘mess’ he talks about that has to get out of his way.
http://www.breitbart.tv/obama-dont-want-the-folks-who-created-the-mess-to-do-a-lot-of-talking/
Let’s just hope that the nuclear initiative doesn’t die with this. That’s something actually useful.
The dirty little secret is, the Republicans want illegal immigrants for cheep labor and the Democrats want them for their votes. I heard that on Fox news last night.
They are pushing the VAT tax hard now in place of the carbon tax. I just thank God for the complete and total economic collapse that is coming. It’s the only thing that will make the bad people stop doing what they are doing to us.
Darn, I was hoping an energy bill would turn the last few stragglers short of making an utter and record breaking rout of the control, tax, and redistribute Democrats this November.
I don’t understand how this immigration bill is possibly going to please all factions. As usual with the Reid/Pelosi/Obama triumverate they’ll see it as yet another control, tax, and redistribute opportunity which will still end up costing the American taxpayers a boodle for it and lord only knows how many new federal bearucrats will have to be hired to oversee the program. It’ll almost certainly cause more political damage than good to the Democrats. They just can’t help themselves in that regard. Probably not as much damage as a climate bill would do though.
If states with an undocumented worker problem would just take a page from Texas they wouldn’t have problems. California is the biggest complainer and most of us probably know how badly that state has been managed lately. Illegals are the designated scapegoats there but it’s really not the brown peoples’ fault. It’s the blue peoples’ fault. And by blue I mean the social and fiscal liberal majority there who make it a blue state like New York as opposed to a red state like Texas.
What the feds will do is make all the rest of us pay for California’s mistakes and to add insult to injury the federal government will only make the problem worse not better. They just can’t seem to help themselves in that regard either.
Michael (11:13:28) :
“The dirty little secret is, the Republicans want illegal immigrants for cheep labor…”
I’ve heard this quite a bit, but it doesn’t make sense [and IANAR].
If I owned a business that used legal labor, I would call ICE if a competitor was using illegals to underbid my business.
And big business is so regulated that they dare not use illegals, aside from the fact that with lots of employees around, someone would be sure to call immigration if they suspected an employee was illegal. I worked at a large company, and they used the Pilot Program to check every applicant’s status prior to hiring.
It does make sense that the Democrats [IANAD either] want the flood of illegals to continue unabated, as the widespread vote fraud by ACORN provides the winning margin in many elections.
You are right about the VAT. In almost every country it has been established [Canada being the lone exception], it has been subsequently raised, in many cases to double or triple the starting rate. It’s easy to say, “We can help this or that group by raising the VAT only 1%.”
What people don’t realize is that a VAT is a tax at every step of production, which will dramatically raise the price of everything, while wages stay more or less the same. So get ready for a greatly diminished life style, and lots less spending money.
I have only briefly scanned the comments of this article, so if someone else has already stated this, then just treat this as a “ditto”…
I strongly disagree with the headline. Graham’s actions had absolutely nothing to do with him coming to his senses…this is just another political play on his part to try and garner some favor from the power brokers, or to gain a little free press. It’s not like he said “Hey…you know?…I’ve been taking a look at all this AGW information, and I think the science supports an entirely different conclusion!, so I’m withdrawing my support until we figure this out!”.
Instead, he said “Oh yeah?…you think you can do that?…well then take THIS!”
Headline should be changed to “Although his actions have nothing to do with challenging the premise, Graham withdraws his support from the bill due to a partisan reaction.”
JimB
Don’t anybody go tripping over themselves to praise Lindsey Graham for ‘coming to his senses’ – it’s more like ‘Lindsey put his finger into the wind and felt an ill wind blowing’. While I’ll grant that part of his temper snit over having his front of the camera ‘getting something done time is certainly a convenient part of this, it’s probably a bigger factor than any change of heart he’s had over AGW.
Lindsey isn’t playing for anyone but Lindsey here. Crap and Tax was his cup of tea because of the fawning attention he’d receive as being ‘reasonable’ and ‘able to work with’ his colleagues, no matter how odious, wrongheaded, and dangerous the proposal. If he’s not going to get a lot of TV love for it, why bother.
The current administration is in the cat-bird seat, to be sure, holding the gun of EPA regulations, with the hammer cocked back, against everyone’s head, blackmailing the Congress into passing an absolutely horrid measure guaranteed to severely impair the functioning of the US Economy (which many political observers believe is the whole point, screw the planet). But, since public opinion is swinging, and time before November is running out, it’s likely the political calculus is to move on to something that isn’t covered by the regulatory contingency, and ‘they’ find necessary to act upon before they lose the chance (after November) of advancing their agenda, and immigration is one of the larger items still on the ‘to do’ list.
The vampire of crap and tax certainly isn’t dead – and will remain a threat for as long as EPA is free to inflict regulatory chaos upon the nation. Cap and tax will only be finally off the table when the EPA train is derailed, so there’s no longer the false choice cover of ‘better than the alternative’ to make make such a $h*t sammich less revolting.
After legislating the temperature, Congress should legislate wind. I would like to see a 60% reduction in wind where I live.
Using the same GCMs which can control the temperature within one tenth of a degree, Congress should be able to regulate wind speed and direction quite precisely.
CRS , Dr. P.H. – I tried to link to the Holdren power points that you posted a couple of days ago . According to the site , the pdf has been “damaged” and is not available . Did you by any chance copy it to your files ? If so , could you repost it ?
And if the climate is miraculously healed (if you believe it is ill ), then they will repeal the cap and trade tax, won’t they ? Many forms of taxation have been repealed after implementation, haven’t they ?
Cap & Trade is dead.
Grahm is just the newest grave digger.
He’s trying to save his skin.
He may be angling for a SFC appointment.
I would prefer him to be ambassador to east crapola.
Anything to get him out of office and out of the state.
Senator Graham didn’t come to his senses. He is just angry that this administration and his lemmings in Congress are pushing into second place because a state had the audacity to enforce the law. How dare Arizona enforce the law! What gives the right to do that? (take note of the sarcasm.) Senator Graham thought he was important, found out he was just a pawn, and decided to take his ball and go home, so to speak. Senator Graham is just pouting. He did not come to his senses.
CRS, Dr.P.H. (10:50:05) wrote:
“Don’t worry, the Obama administration has always held the EPA’s Endangerment Finding in their back pocket. That’s how they’ll pull it off, through direct regulation of carbon dioxide. Watch for it.”
Like so much from the EPA, this Finding is based on junk science, so I would like to hope that it will be stopped in court.
But in other EPA cases (e.g. the wolf introduction out west) they manage to cherry pick useful idiot judges who overrule real science.
I can’t believe what has happened to the good old USA. Beck is right.
We should never forget Oscar Wildes famous last words- ” Either that wallpaper goes, or I do.”
Graham has not “Come to his Senses.” This is purely political and has nothing to do with any the details of any climate legislation being proposed. It’s just withdrawal of support in order to get what he wants.
Michael (11:13:28) :
I just thank God for the complete and total economic collapse that is coming. It’s the only thing that will make the bad people stop doing what they are doing to us.
I have to admire your optimism. I can’t see even total economic collapse putting a damper on these folks, I suspect it would only lead them to redouble their efforts.
The problem remains what it always has been. People always value freedom and liberty, but they only begin to realize how easily it’s lost when that loss affects them in a very personal way. Meanwhile the tyrannical impulse, which is as much or more a constant of human nature as the the love of freedom, is relentless. It operates 24/7/365, year after year, decade after decade, century after century, millenium after millenium. History is rife with constant reminders of this, but another constant of human nature, the tendency to assume that what is happening in the present moment is unique and exceptional, pretty much guarantees that people won’t notice the eager beavers of tyranny gnawing away at the tree of liberty until they hear the yell of TIMBER!
The founders of this country did their best to design our government and Constitution to protect us from our own tyrannical nature, but even they recognized that the fight against it would be neverending and warned us repeatedly that “the price of liberty is eternal vigilance.” Unfortunately, too many assumed that, once the obvious superiority of freedom was demonstrated, tyranny was doomed to inevitable decline. We are living through the rather painful falsification of that assumption.
At this point even if the political will could be generated to oust every last one of our current crop of kleptocrats from office, a highly unlikely prospect, the huge spinning flywheel of bureaucracies and entitlements, which are now our real government, would remain. Even if every member of elected government in the country could be magically replaced with a strict Constitutionalist it would be a daunting task to turn us away from our decline into a socialist distopia. Still, given what has been sacrificed by so many to give us our opportunity to live in freedom, we owe our posterity our own last full measure to try.
Obama is trying to do everything to get Graham’s support. Unfortunately, Obama’s aid told the president that Graham’s first name is Billy Graham, so Barack just had a prayer with a wrong person:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/04/25/AR2010042501286.html
We in Britain have a General Election in less than two weeks; the politicians are out and about on the hustings (“the stump” I believe it is called in the US) explaining their respective positions on numerous topics.
I went to listen to my Member of Parliament, Andrew Tyrie (Conservative), make his pitch last Thursday in the village where I live. He won my vote (and many, many others) when it was revealed that he was one of only three Members of Parliament who voted AGAINST the vacuous Climate Change Bill which was passed by the other 630+ Memebers without any thought or consideration whatsoever. This lumbered the British with a multi-billion scheme to build huge numbers of windmills in the sea (16th Century technology for a 21st Century problem!) for which we’ve now got to pay over 50 million pounds for repairs before they’ve even turned a blade!
Lone voices like his deserve support from all right-thinking people! He’s got mine.
Thanks for posting this!!!
Here’s the problem, if they don’t pass something (hopefully more intelligent then what’s being proposed), the EPA will be forced to start regulating CO2?