Senate Democrats Begin Drawing Road Map to 60 Votes on Climate Bill Sign

ClimateWire (7/8, Samuelsohn) – Majority Leader Harry Reid yesterday insisted that he wanted to get a sweeping energy and global warming measure onto the Senate floor between mid-September and early October. Environment and Public Works Chairwoman Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) plans to release the core pieces of a climate package within the next two weeks, with a markup penciled in for either the last week of this month or early August… Reid plans to pull from Bingaman's bill, as well work from the Finance, Foreign Relations, Agriculture and Commerce committees. But it is unclear which committees, if any, will actually vote on their own legislation.

As with the House, the climate debate breaks down over regional lines just as much as it does along partisan ones, as evidenced by Ohio Democratic Sen. Sherrod Brown. "I don't think the strategy is set on how you get to 60 yet until we figure out how you get Midwestern senators that are interested in manufacturing to support climate change," Brown said.

A large bloc of Senate Republicans have no intention of voting with Obama and the Democrats on the climate bill…What needles are the majority trying to hide in this haystack?" [Kit] Bond said. "What backroom deals were made to buy support? What provisions were added in the middle of the night? How will the bureaucratic nightmare this bill creates work?"

U.S. News & World Report (7/10, Garber) – Boxer's starting point is the 1,400-plus-page House bill, written by Democratic Reps. Henry Waxman of California and Ed Markey of Massachusetts. Many of its core features, such as a cap-and-trade system requiring big polluters to hold permits for every ton of pollution they emit, should remain essentially intact in the Senate. Many of the tactics used in the House to cajole moderate Democrats to vote yes, such as handing out free pollution permits to powerful industries like electric utilities and oil refineries rather than requiring companies to buy them, will most likely return.

One area to watch is manufacturing. A last-minute addition in the House bill provides big bucks for U.S. manufacturers, creating a $30 billion loan fund to help build new facilities and "retool" existing ones to manufacture parts for clean-energy technologies. The new provisions [in the House Bill] let Congress tax cheaper goods coming from countries that won't adopt emissions limits. But President Obama has balked at the tariff idea, warning it could send "protectionist signals." Some say he's just overreacting…The trade provisions wouldn't take effect until 2020 …"far enough in the future that it gives the parties in international negotiations ample opportunity to reach agreement."