Last week the House Energy & Power Subcommittee marked up H.R. 910, the Energy Tax Prevention Act. Today, the full House Energy & Commerce Committee will mark up the bill.
Opponents, especially Reps. Waxman, Markey, and Inslee, viciously attacked the bill last Thursday. Their arguments are reviewed in detail at the blog GlobalWarming.Org.
The post concludes with this summary of the Waxman-Markey-Inslee argument as follows:
We know what is good for America and the world. It’s a future without fossil fuels. We can’t persuade the people’s representatives to support our agenda and turn it into law. Therefore, it is necessary for EPA to implement our agenda regardless of the defeat of cap-and-trade, the November 2011 elections, and the separation of powers. Our agenda is more important than any constitutional principle that might interfere with it.
The question on limiting of the breadth of power of the EPA to have control over the future of the United States energy policy is one of the most important debates of our time.
h/t to Marlo Lewis
The Republicans’ version of Waxman/Markey/Inslee’s objection to HR 910 is
We know what is good for America and the world. It’s a future without fossil fuels. We can’t persuade the people’s representatives to support our agenda and turn it into law. Therefore, it is necessary for EPA to implement our agenda regardless of the defeat of cap-and-trade, the November 2011 elections, and the separation of powers. Our agenda is more important than any constitutional principle that might interfere with it.
Why should one trust the proponents of HR910 to accurately represent the arguments of the opponents? An intelligent discussion of the issue should include some reference to what Waxman Markey and Inslee actually said, or at least an impartial news summary of their arguments.
Based on what I have read their objections are:
*In fact the Supreme Court upheld the EPA’s right to make the finding that GHG’s are pollutants and to regulate them based on existing Congressional legislation.
*The EPA’s findings are based on the consensus of the world’s climate scientists and scientific organizations.
*Regulation of GHG’s is needed to protect future generations from harmful effects of climate change.
*The Republicans pushing this bill are wrong about the science.
*In addition, if the bill ever passes the Senate, the president will veto it, so it has no hope of becoming law.
It is pretty clear to me that the ,Republican legislators, who are pushing this are doing it out of conservative ideology, and have no clue about the science.
eadler, it is clear to me (regardless of your cogent reminder that the original post was a conservative summary of a liberal position, not a quote) that the EPA is seeing itself as being quite powerful and carries a commission to create a rule of law. So I ask again, who invited a 4th branch to our government? It seems disingenuous to me, to do an end run around a branch, a branch duly ELECTED to represent the people, that refuses to enact a law. I don’t know about you, but I see a slippery…nay… GREASED, slope here.
I saw Markey on TV today bemoaning nuclear power. I have watched him for years and he has been a long time foe of nuclear power. If this bill (not the blog opinion) represents his views on fossil fuel, and I think I’ve seen this from him before, it indicates the guy wants to erase 65% of our electrical generation and replace it with what? Windmills? Good luck with that.
And the Congress now has a right to reign in that power that was handed over un-Constitutionally in the first place.
No they aren’t. Their findings are based on the IPCC report. The “consensus” canard is a myth.
No it is not.
No they aren’t.
The President doesn’t have much choice… if he doesn’t pass it, the EPA gets no funding for anything, and it doesn’t need to be a law to have the same force.
You either aren’t from the US or you’re just an idiot. Either way…
Mark
Apparently the EPA says H2O is pollution. The head of the EPA, Lisa Jackson, has said, “Greenhouse gases are pollution”. 95% of greenhouse gases is H2O. So H2O is pollution.
video of Lisa Jackson saying greenhouse gases are pollution:
A little insight into how some in Washington handle ‘global warming’.
TomB says:
March 15, 2011 at 9:08 am
tom in indy says:
March 15, 2011 at 8:24 am says: “on the right we have big oil”
Do just a little research on just which political party receives the most contributions from oil companies. You’ll obviously not be pleased with what you find.
Try looking at who funded Obama to the tune og $150m. Facebook, Google ???
David S says:
March 15, 2011 at 7:52 am
“IMHO the founders missed the boat by not providing a means to immediately remove from office anyone who refuses to uphold his oath.”
Sure they did. It’s in the second amendment to the constitution.
As far as I can see these gentlemen did not say what is quoted above. However their wish to get us off a carbon diet has just been trumpted by the nuclear crisis in Japan. The American MSM has killed the future of nuclear energy and won’t be happy until all the plants are shut down. So much for weaning us off of carbon.
I have the misfortune of living in Ed Malarkey’s district. It is so dominated by moonbats that Ed generally runs unopposed. Last year a chiropractor from Methuen (I think) challenged him—nice guy, but no fire and no money, and ‘Fast Eddie’ (as Howie Carr on WRKO calls him) romped over the challenger. Rep. Malarkey is a blithering idiot, who nonetheless fancies himself an expert on all things energy-related. According to Howie, before he got elected to Congress, he was driving an ice-cream truck.
This state is so left-wing that referenda to limit income and sales taxes routinely go down to defeat. It’s not called ‘Taxachusetts’ for nothin’.
Amen! They are also skewing elections by getting cash to their lackeys in the Democratic Party and getting bodies out to the polls on Election Day.
But the tide is turning. Scott Brown won. Maybe we’ll have a stronger opponent to Fast Eddie in 2012. The silver lining of the Great Recession is that states are being forced to reign in those public-employee unions, and the Republicans in the House of Representatives are able to challenge the EPA and its coat-holders like Waxman and Malarkey.
/Mr Lynn
Frank K. says:
March 15, 2011 at 4:04 pm
“Sun Spot – if you hate working for private industry – then, please quit your job, start your OWN company, becomes its CEO, then YOU can call the shots. Pretty simple…”
Frank – Sun Spot doesn’t ‘have the cojones’ for that tough of a job.
This is meaningless because as all of us know, congress is particularly bad at writing airtight laws. SCOTUS in many cases gets its hands tied by the crap these nitwits put onto paper, and this is the case with those findings. The clean air act (CAA) was particularly poorly worded to include “any species” as I recall, which enables the EPA to essentially do what it wants so long as any species can be shown to be in peril. In short, the findings of SCOTUS have no bearing on what the intent of the EPA was, or what is particularly good for the United States in this regard.
The EPA’s “findings” are basically plagiarism from a flawed IPCC report known to have used non-peer-reviewed literature to base it’s assessments of risks to people. It cannot possibly be believed in this case. Consensus does not exist, and even if it did, it is scientifically meaningless.
Good luck regulating water vapor, the most potent GHG.
This bill has nothing to do with science, only re-asserting correct bureaucratic power where it was intended to be. Hence this argument is completely tangential.
If this is so, then Waxman, Markey, and Inslee are making a hilarious political mistake looking so hysterical and spouting such nonsense in a world that refuses to cooperate with predictions when another politician down the chain would save them.
It’s pretty clear to me that politicians in general, having usually been lawyers, hate science with near passion and take their advice from their staff’s full of ideologues. But you’re of course free to throw out whatever partisan nonsense you wish.
Mark T:
(1) Yes, Congress has the right to do this. And, the Senate and President have a right to oppose it.
(2) Here, you go throwing around claims of “un-Constitutionally”. The Supreme Court does not agree with you, and the current court is hardly a bastion of liberalism at the moment (to put it mildly). Fine, you think you understand the Constitutionality better than the Supreme Court, that is your right. But, you should at least accept the reality that this is not the law of the land.
Dave Springer says:
If this statement is implying what I think it is, I am very surprised it was allowed past moderation and I find it quite offensive. I hope those here who are claiming (with no evidence) that their opponents are the one sacrificing constitutional principles will condemn the implications of this statement in unambiguous terms.
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Robert E. Phelan says:
March 15, 2011 at 9:01 am
Folks, Waxman, Markey and Inslee did NOT make that statement. It was a “summary” by the blogger, his interpretation of what the Democrats meant by their arguments. It is a somewhat over-the-top statement and I think Representatives Waxman, Markey and Inslee would reject that formulation and be horrified at the sentiment…. even if it is not that far off the mark.
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They should come forward & denounce the statement.
Even if they did, I still wouldn’t believe them — they’re career Stalinist bureaucrats specializing in lying.
P. Solar says: “Seems like just about everyone got conned by this the same as I did until I checked out that quote on the actual blog post, not the misleading excerpt here.”
Not Jorge. It was clear in context, since the “quote” was so over-the-top, and there were none of these: ” ” Yes, there was no /sarc flag. Yes, these guys are bananas. And yes, Warmistas never do things like make up quotes people don’t actually say. Right?
/sarc²
Mark T says:
March 15, 2011 at 9:53 pm ;
Well said! But it’s “rein in”, not “reign in”. Think mules, not kings! 😉