post by Dan Varroney, Chief Operating Officer of American Solutions
Disguised as an attempt to introduce new safety measures for offshore drilling, Reid is actually using this disaster and playing off the hardship of the American people on the Gulf Coast as a way to play politics and increase your taxes.
post by Darren Samuelsohn, Politico July 13, 2010
Senate Democratic leaders are set to roll the dice this month on a comprehensive energy and climate bill [which the government has no business in], including a cap on greenhouse gases from power plants, even though they don’t yet have the 60 votes needed to move the controversial plan. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) confirmed Tuesday that he would gamble on the high-stakes legislation—much as he undertook health care [which the government has no business in] and Wall Street reform [which the government has no business in]—that for now remains in the rough-draft stage but that will soon be the subject of intense negotiations. “Whatever I bring to the floor, I want to get 60 votes,” Reid told Politico shortly after announcing his strategy for a full Senate debate as early as the week of July 26.
[Debate? I want. Sounds like a threat!]
American Government, America, Politics, Christians, LouisianaReid confirmed the bill will have four parts—an oil spill response ; a clean-energy and job-creation title based on work done in the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee; a tax package from the Senate Finance Committee; and a section that deals with greenhouse gas emissions from the electric utility industry. “In this stage, we’ve not completed it. But we’re looking at a way that’s making sure when we talk about pollution, it’ll focus just on the utility sector,” Reid said.
[What response? The only people I know of down here cleaning up are illegally Mexicans stealing our money with the government's approval. What response? This is of their creation. They haven't done anything. Who's going to get our money for this non-response? And why does the American people have to pay for the government's and BP's lack of responsibility? I still don't know what is meant by greenhouse gas emissions or who the hell made this up but it's getting old. There is no such thing as clean energy. Do you hear that big federal American government! Wind turbines have to be built—hello, what do you think they are going to be built with, the same goes to anything else that has to be built? Morons! And...and turbines have been already proven ineffective! You are full of it, puppets in the White House if you think you are going to force me to buy something I don't want. The car insurance, the flood insurance...I didn't make noise...no more! You puppets are over for this America! And what the hell focus just on the utiltiy sector suppose to mean? Oh, yhea, control water, gas, oil, electricty—then you control the population of the United States of America. I don't think so. I have my guns. Do you?]
Proposals for tackling emissions from power plants are emerging from several Senate offices. A three-month-old draft from Sen. Jeff Bingaman (D-N.M.), leaked Tuesday, seeks to cut emissions from electric utilities by 17 percent by 2020 and 43 percent by 2030, compared with 2005 levels. And Sens. John Kerry (D-Mass.) and Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.) are floating a proposal this week and hope to win support from key GOP moderates such as Sen. Olympia Snowe of Maine. Underscoring the delicate nature of the issue, Reid insisted that the proposal he will introduce in about 10 days should not be called a cap-and-trade plan or even a cap on emissions. “I don’t use that,” he said. “Those words are not in my vocabulary. We’re going to work on pollution.”
[This is all a lie. It's what was the original cap-and-trade stuff was about. They are going to share this tax base with third-world countries. I've already told you on this blog that there is no such thing as global warming. Over 17,000 scientist have put their name to that very fact but the world governments are ignoring them. The press have also suppressed their findings. Earth is cooling, NOT warming. Humans are NO where near causing damage to the atmosphere. It's all a scam to gain control of the people. Do your research and you will see that I am right. Americans, you are letting these people control you more and more, and they are deceiving you more and more. You as the American citizen is suppose to be the government, remember government by the people, for the people. When was the last time you voted for legislation that Congress passed. They are running the government now, not the people of this country, a selected few who have been in office for years and years. We are no longer a republic or a democracy. Americans, you are controlled and your Congress is an aristocratic kingdom. Have you ever visited one of their homes. They all live like kings and queens. WAKE UP!]
Reid’s task in the coming weeks will be just as intense as his other big legislative lifts. Besides vocal opposition from nearly all Senate Republicans, he faces concerns from liberal Democrats that the legislation is too weak and strong skepticism from moderate Democrats who would rather stay away from any type of mandatory carbon limits. “Taking action and getting 58 votes—what’s it going to do?” said Senate Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee Chairman John Rockefeller (D-W.Va.). “The [U.S.] Chamber of Commerce is going to spend $75 million to try to defeat Democratic candidates. If you have 60 votes, then go ahead and do it. But don’t do it for the sake of doing it,” he said.
Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) said she supports tackling climate change through a bill that starts with the electric utility industry, which produces about a third of the nation’s greenhouse gases. [This has no effect on the atmosphere. Where did she get her education? Can she actually read?] But she isn’t sure the votes are there and fears the issue could be lost for a long time if Reid can’t muster the 60 votes needed to thwart a filibuster. “The question is, we’ve lost three times, I don’t want to lose again,” she said, referring to Senate floor votes on climate legislation in 2003, 2005 and 2008 that never received more than 48 votes.
[Fire this woman, please!]
Robert Dillon, a spokesman for Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska), ranking member of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, said he, too, is dubious of Reid’s plans, which appear to set aside only a limited amount of time for floor debate. [Of course, he wants to control the process and force the vote...dictatorship! WAKE UP PEOPLE!] “The idea that the majority leader has set aside only a week to debate a comprehensive energy bill on the Senate floor shows that he’s not serious,” Dillon said, adding that he expected to debate a series of amendments on climate change, the Yucca Mountain nuclear waste repository—which Reid opposes [Do you see the hypocrisy yet?]—and a plan authored by Rockefeller to block Environmental Protection Agency climate regulations for two years. Environmental groups, though, welcomed Reid’s decision to pencil in plans for the floor debate and insisted they’re prepared to weather attacks from their opponents.
“The Senate, the House, the green community and the business community have done a lot of spadework to prepare, to think through and put a national climate policy in place,” said Kevin Knobloch, president of the Union of Concerned Scientists. “From where we sit, [Reid’s plan] is a logical leadership step.”Knobloch acknowledged, however, that Reid begins his final push without all the support he needs to begin debate on the legislation. But he said swing votes won’t come to the bargaining table unless they’re forced to. “Yes, it’s uncertain as of today whether we have 60 votes on this revised strategy of a utility-only cap with other clean energy provisions,” he said. “But it is important to call the vote.”
Democrats are making their push without any clear sense of how industry will respond to their plans. Kerry, Lieberman and Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) hosted the Chamber, American Petroleum Institute, National Association of Manufacturers and a range of other influential trade organizations for several rounds of closed-door talks while the senators were working on a bill covering multiple sectors of the economy. But that was long before the negotiations reached Reid’s office and the plan had been scaled back to just the power sector.
Brian Wolff, vice president of communications at the Edison Electric Institute, the trade group for most investor-owned power companies, said his group was operating without any clear picture of where Reid would take the climate debate. “To this point, we’ve not seen anything,” Wolff said. “We’ve not seen any version of the type of rough draft he’s talking about.” Institute officials did meet last week with staff for the White House, as well as Reid, Kerry and Lieberman. And CEOs who serve on the group’s rotating board will be on Capitol Hill next Tuesday to lobby lawmakers on climate change, as well as several other issues related to the industry, Wolff said.
Support from the power companies is critical for the climate legislation to pass, said Eileen Claussen, president of the Pew Center on Global Climate Change and a former top climate official in the Clinton administration. That could be possible, given the industry’s experience in a cap-and-trade system for acid rain, which was signed into law by President George H.W. Bush as part of the 1990 Clean Air Act Amendments. “This is the only thing that has any chance to deal with carbon,” she said. “The utilities know how to deal with this. It’s a Republican idea. It can be done in a way that’s revenue neutral, free-market oriented and protects consumers. And it should be something for which you can get bipartisan support, assuming it’s done right.”
Reid and the Democrats can be sure they won’t have support from all Republicans. Don Stewart, a spokesman for Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), cited his boss’s remarks last month. “They want to seize on the oil spill to pass a national energy tax referred to around Washington as cap and trade,” McConnell said then. “They never miss an opportunity to seize on a crisis to turn to the far-left to-do list. This has been a big item on the far-left to-do list—a national energy tax. Mark my words, that is precisely what they intend to do—Seize on the crisis in the Gulf to try to pass this.” Anticipating the GOP attacks, Lieberman told reporters that the push toward the 60 votes would require more effort from the puppet and his top advisers. “We want them more engaged,” Lieberman said.
The puppet administration officials are already in the middle of the fight. Reid, for example, met Tuesday with White House energy and climate adviser Carol Browner, Energy Secretary Steven Chu and Interior Secretary Ken Salazar. But the issue didn’t come up when 15 top Senate Democrats, including Reid, met with the puppet at the White House on Tuesday, said Senate Majority Whip Dick Durbin (D-Ill.). “It was not a specific legislative agenda meeting,” Durbin said. “It was a meeting about our end game here as the session draws to a close and what we plan on doing together.” At the White House, press secretary Robert Gibbs insisted that the lack of talk about energy and climate during the puppet meeting with senators shouldn’t be interpreted as a lack of interest by the administration. “Energy is something, obviously, that will come up before the Senate leaves, as will a number of things, like [Supreme Court Justice nominee Elena] Kagan and—and other things,” Gibbs told reporters. “I expect the puppet will be active in that debate.”
continued post by Dan Varroney, Chief Operating Officer of American Solutions
The idea behind Reid‘s approach is that Senators will not want to vote against new oil drilling safety measures in the wake of the Gulf spill no matter if the bill also contains new energy taxes. He’s using this tragedy to punish you for driving to work, adjusting your thermostat, and powering your home. Reid‘s global warming plan will likely limit how many tons of carbon dioxide electric utilities can emit, which makes it a massive new tax on energy that will kill jobs and send electricity prices skyrocketing.
[Read the article below by Goode.]
post by Darren Goode, TheHill July 13, 2010
Bingaman draft outlines utility-only climate approach—A draft climate bill from Senate Energy and Natural Resources Chairman Jeff Bingaman (D-N.M.) circulating on the Hill Tuesday could solve some of the policy and political puzzle Democratic leaders have grappled with ahead of the Senate’s broader energy and climate debate. The 50-page Bingaman draft echoes several key talking points Democratic leaders and centrists in both parties have been sounding off on lately on what it will take to get 60 votes for a combined carbon pricing and energy production strategy. Its wider public exposure comes as Senate Majority Leader Reid (D-Nev.) on Tuesday signaled that the full Senate will debate energy and climate policy starting the week of July 26.
It would reduce greenhouse gas emissions from the utility and potentially other industrial sectors by 17 percent by 2020 and 42 percent by 2030. It would mandate that electric utilities participate in a cap-and-trade program by 2012 but allow manufacturers and other industrial sources to elect to opt in to the program. While some manufacturers who do not participate would not receive free emission allowances to offset higher electricity costs, local distribution company allowances would go to residential consumers and certain industrials regardless. The draft also would preempt industrial sources who participate from being regulated by the Environmental Protection Agency until 2018 and prevent a State from implementing or enforcing a comprehensive greenhouse gas reduction program with tradable emission allowances for the first five years. A “safety valve”—which Bingaman has also used in past climate bills he has drafted—would seek to limit the cost of a program to businesses. It would also establish an energy security dividend payment that resembles a cap-and-dividend approach favored by Sens. Maria Cantwell (D-Wash.) and Susan Collins (R-Maine). The dividends though would be based on energy intensity rather than on a per-capita basis. On the other hand, utilities also would get fewer emissions allowances than under a House-passed cap-and-trade program, and some Midwestern utilities and lawmakers would balk at allowances being given based half on retail sales and half on historic emissions.
[All sounds like dictatorship to me. I wonder. My State declared the Tenth Amendment. It doesn't have to follow this law, if it doesn't want to. The question is— will it have enough balls to do without the control of federal dollars?]
Bingaman spokesman Bill Wicker said the draft bill has gone through several iterations since the one written in April after talks on and off Capitol Hill, which he declined to detail. Bingaman also still has no plans yet to actually offer a plan, Wicker said. But it does fall in line with what some have said is necessary to attract enough centrists in the two parties.
[Neither of these parties have brought this bill, just like the health care deal, back to their districts so that their voters can look it over.]
Sens. John Kerry (D-Mass.) and Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.) have shifted from their initial push for a three-sector carbon pricing plan to one that focuses on utilities first and potentially later on manufacturers and other industrial sources. “That would certainly be an ideal expression,” Kerry said Monday of the “utility first” option. But he added, “We’ve got to figure out where the votes are here, we can’t drive this exclusively by policy right now. It’s trickier than that.” Kerry said a new plan “may have some voluntary components to it, some purely optional components to it.” Centrist Republicans Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) and Olympia Snowe (R-Maine) have advocated the utility-only approach, though both said this week they have yet to personally see any draft proposals.
[Not ONE member of the American government has any right dictating to any utility company what they can and cannot do. This is private business. All the utility companies need to do is shut the power off at the White House, the Capital Building and all other buildings in D.C.—I guarantee you they are not run on solar power or wind turbines—and see what they do! I bet they will rethink their position. Americans you have more power than you think. You are just scare and afraid to use it!]
continued post by Dan Varroney, Chief Operating Officer of American Solutions
To give you an idea of exactly how destructive Reid‘s plan could be, a recent study found that cap-and-trade could kill 5 million jobs over the next few decades and cost each taxpayer thousands of dollars in higher energy costs. Addressing oil drilling safety in the wake of the Gulf oil rig disaster is too serious to be held up by a wildly unpopular effort by Senate liberals to impose a new energy tax on all Americans. Senate liberals should promote their new energy taxes in a separate bill and not waste any more time in passing oil drilling reforms. But that won’t happen, because the Left knows new energy taxes are unpopular with the American people, and a bill that would kill jobs and raise the cost of energy would go down in flames.
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