Cap and Trade- the Next Battleground

It seems the Democrats haven’t learned any lessons from the health care reform battle. The energy bill in the Senate committee includes nuclear power permitting and offshore drilling. The Republicans are saying that’s not enough- if cap and trade on CO2 stays in the bill, they’ll reject it.

The Democrats appear to playing Texas Hold’em with all their cards face up while the Republicans have all their cards face down. Rather than craft a partisan bill and then negotiate for what the Republicans want added in, they started with major concessions on the first card. Such a deal… The Republicans don’t have to do anything to get what they want.

The whole process is beginning to smell just like health reform. The lobbyists have both parties in their back pockets. How else would nuclear power and offshore drilling make it into the initial bill? Now Senator Kerry is suggesting if the Republicans don’t bite on these carrots, he’ll bring out his stick and punish them by removing them from the bill. Fat chance. He won’t be able to. The lobbyists won’t let him. In case you think this is small potatoes, the energy lobby has over 2200 lobbyists crawling the halls of Congress- 22 lobbyists for every Senator.

The battle to address global warming, like health care reform, is stacked against the people again. Unfortunately, this battle is probably over before it starts. Here’s an article on the latest buzz:

http://energytopic.nationaljournal.com/2009/11/kerry-dems-will-pull.php