Interchange Blog
Watch the Senate Heat Up – Live
This morning the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee began its mark-up of Lieberman-Warner’s global warming bill – “America’s Climate Security Act.”
You can watch the live webcast here, just look for the red “Live Hearing” button. I’m listening now, and it’s certainly interesting.
The current debate (11:30 am EST) is over energy bills for low-income households. Each Senator is claiming to triumph the needs of the lower classes, but Chairwoman Barbara Boxer (D-CA) just noted that several Senators speaking out of concern for low-income citizens often vote against programs like LIHEAP.
The low-income debate spurred from an amendment, of course, because Senators are dropping amendments left and right in order to slow the process.
Republican Senators plan to introduce over 150 amendments to slow the bill (E&E PM, subs. req’d). Sen. Larry Craig (R-Idaho) alone is responsible for working on 46 of the amendments – [JR: a valuable exercise that certainly vindicates his decision to stay in the Senate] – with others coming from Sens. James Inhofe (R-OK), George Voinovich (R-OH), David Vitter (R-LA) and Kit Bond (R-MO).
According to Sen. James Inhofe’s staff director, the bill will pass committee, but, “the suspense will be on how individual members vote on individual amendments.” (In fact, Inhofe just called for roll call votes on the amendments. Sounds a lot more like another delay tactic than the Senator being honestly anxious about the votes.)
The action won’t stop any time soon – Sen. Boxer just announced that she and Sen. Inhofe have bought the group lunch so that they can work through this bill. Alas, no such thing as a free lunch when there are 150 amendments on your plate.