If you’re wondering what all the hoopla is about (been glued to the Michael Jackson story 24/7 for the past day or so?), the Democrats’ “National Energy Tax Bill” (H.R. 2454, American Clean Energy and Security Act (ACES), the Waxman-Markey Clean Energy Bill, sponsored by Rep. Henry A. Waxman, Chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, and Rep. Edward J. Markey, Chairman of the House Select Committee on Energy Independence and Global Warming aka Cap and Trade Bill, Climate Change Bill), passed yesterday, June 26, in the U.S. House of Representatives by a vote of 219-212.
Greg Hitt and Stephen Power write June 27 in the Wall Street Journal:
- [The bill] will reach into almost every corner of the U.S. economy. By putting a price on emissions of greenhouse gases, such as carbon dioxide, the bill would affect the way electricity is generated, how homes and offices are designed, how foreign trade is conducted and how much Americans pay to drive cars or to heat their homes.
Blogger Just a Grunt at JammieWearingFool, who was listening closely to the Congressional session, comments today:
- For those that didn’t watch and can’t be bothered with what goes on in Washington by your elected officials you deserve exactly what you will get with this legislation if it manages to pass through the Senate. For those of us paying attention, unless this is stopped we will be punished right along with the lemmings.
Peter Ferrara wrote in a June 26 op-ed at Fox News:
- When he was running for president Obama promised, over and over, that he would cut taxes for the 95% of Americans making less than $250,000 per year. He pledged that his tax increases would only apply to the top 5% of Americans making over $250,000. Yet Obama fully supported passage of the House cap-and-trade tax bill. If the bill reaches his desk, your taxes are going up.
So. Just to refresh your memory, here is PrezCanO admitting all the way back in March 2008 that “cap and trade” will cause electricity rates to skyrocket:
He was right, was he not?
And, before digging any deeper, let’s next listen to House Republican Leader John Boehner (R-Ohio) on June 25 re Dems’ “National Energy Tax”:
Boehner: “I Have Never Seen Anything This Ridiculous.”
You can take an up-close look below at Boehner’s National Energy Tax chart (brazenly copied from WizBang Blog).
Abracadabra!
Congratulations, Congress Critters! You just passed a bill that doesn’t exist. Or, as Paul Blumenthal at the Sunlight Foundation called it, 300 Pages Out of Thin Air. (Blumenthal suggests you can show your displeasure at such underhanded tactics; visit ReadTheBill.org.)
David Freddoso reported June 26 4:48 PM ET in the Washington Examiner:
- By all appearances, the House is about to vote on a very long bill of which it has no completed official copy.
Texas Republican Reps. Joe Barton and Louie Gohmert have just asked the chair whether there exists a complete, updated copy of the Waxman-Markey carbon-cap bill.
“If a bill for which there is no copy were to actually pass this body,” Barton asked, “could the bill without a copy be sent to the Senate for its consideration?”
Through a series of parliamentary inquiries, the Republicans learned that the 300-plus page managers’ amendment, added to the bill last night in the House Rules Committee, has not even been been integrated with the official copy of the 1,090-page bill at the House Clerk’s desk, let alone in any other location. The two documents are side-by-side at the desk as the clerk reads through the instructions in the 300 page document for altering the 1,090 page document.
But they cannot be simply combined, because the amendment contains 300 pages of items like this: “Page 15, beginning line 8, strike paragraph (11)…” How many members of Congress do you suppose have gone through it all to see how it changes the bill?
Global Warming is apparently so urgent that we can’t even wait until members of Congress know what they’re voting on.
Robert Casapulla of the New Haven County Independent Examiner wrote June 26:
- A 300 page amendment was slapped onto the bill at 3:09AM today, and as I assumed the bill and amendment remain unread by the very members of Congress that just passed it.
Minority Leader Boehner attempted a filibuster of sorts, taking advantage of a rule that allows the Speaker, Majority Leader and Minority Leader a huge leeway in the amount of time they are allowed to speak on the floor. Boehner focused on the fact that Congress only debated the bill for five hours. Here is a video clip of the Minority Leader starting when Rep. Waxman interrupts Boehner’s floor time:
Chad Pergram at Fox News added more June 26:
- Overnight, House Democrats tacked onto the bill a 300-page amendment. So when Boehner took his time to speak against the package at the end of the debate, the Ohio Republican then decided to peel through major portions of the bill and read them aloud before his House colleagues.
Historically, rank-and-file lawmakers are only given a few minutes to speak on the House floor. But the Speaker, Majority Leader and Minority Leader are given great latitude to speak when they approach the microphones.
After Boehner spoke for a few minutes, the leader donned a pair of reading glasses and began leafing through a gigantic, white binder. At that point, House Energy and Commerce Committee Chairman Henry Waxman (D-CA) asked the chair if Boehner could do that.
“I know we have this magic minute that gives leaders a lot of extra time to speak. But I’m just wondering if there is some limit under the rules on the time that a leader may take, even though the time yielded was not 20 or 30 minutes?” Waxman asked.
Waxman also wondered if any “historical records would be broken” by Boehner reading part of the bill and queried whether the tactic was “an attempt to try to get some people to leave on a close vote?”
The Speaker Pro Tempore, Rep. Ellen Tauscher (D-CA) then ruled that Boehner was order.
“It is the custom of the house is to listen to the leader’s comments,” Tauscher said, prompting a round of applause by Republicans.
Tauscher’s ruling immediately set House precedent, meaning Boehner could continue to read the legislation in order. Democrats, at least for the time being, watched and listened as Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) and Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-MD) conferred near the back of the chamber.
“Is there anything we aren’t regulating in this bill?” Boehner asked, leafing through the pages. He wondered if the community group ACORN qualified for certain grants. He asked why an energy and climate bill was “trying to solve the problems with Fannie (Mae) and Freddie (Mac).”
UPDATE: FreedomFairy sends this picture of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (center), Democratic Reps. Henry Waxman (far left), Steny Hoyer, James Clyburn, Ed Markey, and John Larson after passing energy bill.
Good News, Bad News
The full roll call vote is available here. However, the shorthand version is this:
On the positive side, forty-four Democrats voted “no” on the bill:
- Altmire, Arcuri, Barrow, Berry, Boren, Bright, Carney, Childers, Costa, Costello, Dahlkemper, Davis (AL), Davis (TN), DeFazio, Donnelly (IN), Edwards (TX), Ellsworth, Foster, Griffith, Herseth Sandlin, Holden, Kirkpatrick (AZ), Kissell, Kucinich, Marshall, Massa, Matheson, McIntyre, Melancon, Minnick, Mitchell, Mollohan, N e, Ortiz, Pomeroy, Rahall, Rodriguez, Ross, Salazar, Stark, Tanner, Taylor, Visclosky and Wilson (OH)
On the less positive side, at least as far as their political future might be concerned, eight Republicans voted “yes”. Names and numbers:
Rob at SayAnthingBlog commented:
- I’m not sure why any of these men should be allowed to call themselves Republicans after this. Republicanism is supposed to mean limited government. That is in the GOP platform. Requiring businesses to buy permission from the government before they can emit carbon and engage in business is not limiting government. In fact, given that no business in this nation can produce anything without emitting carbon, it’s a government control on production. Anyone supporting that is not fit to be a Republican.
Out of the party, as far as I’m concerned. We’re better off without them.
Stephen Gordon of the Birmingham Libertarian Examiner remarked:
- It looks like fiscally conservative Republicans, the Libertarian Party and the Constitution Party now have some more low hanging fruit to gather. Also, if these eight Representatives are beaten up badly enough on the Internet, it will make it tougher for some Republican Senator to go Arlen Specter on the bill.
Michelle Malkin, who live-blogged the action in the House closely (see blog for links), dedicated a post to the 8 Cap and Tax Republicans that made the bill’s passage possible. Make no mistake, if it were not for these turncoat Republican members, the bill could not have passed. Had they just stayed home, and not voted, the bill would have lost 211-212.
Missing in Action
Rep. Alcee Hastings (D-Fla.), Co-Chairman of the Commission on Security and Cooperation in Europe (U.S. Helsinki Commission), missed the vote. At least he has a reasonable explanation, as he’s participating in an election observation mission to Albania June 26-29.
Rep. Jeff Flake (R-Ariz.) allegedly missed the vote “due to a family obligation.” According to his official website, if we take him at his word, he would have voted “no”.
- Washington, D.C., Jun 26 – Republican Congressman Jeff Flake, who represents Arizona’s Sixth District, today criticized House Democrats for bringing a cap and trade bill to the House floor.
- “The last thing a fragile economy needs is a new energy tax, yet that’s essentially what this cap and trade bill is,” said Flake. “This bill is more about generating revenue for the federal government than it is about addressing climate change.”
Unfortunately, Congressman Flake was unable to vote on the bill due to a family obligation. Had he been able to vote today, he would have voted against it. Unless the bill is changed substantially, Congressman Flake will vote against the cap and trade conference report when it comes back to the House.
Rep. John Sullivan (R-Okla.) did not vote. Why? It seems that Sullivan, who opposed the bill, had, like Rep. Patrick Kennedy (D-R.I.), “admitted himself to a clinic for alcoholism.”
Desperate Times Call for Desperate Measures
Molly K. Hooper at The Hill provided another detail June 26 at 6:28PM ET. It indicates the Dems were not so sure they had enough votes to pass the bill. Hooper wrote:
- Reps. Patrick Kennedy (D-R.I.) and John Lewis (D-Ga.), who missed every vote this week, are in the House chamber.
The desperate Dems broke Kennedy out of rehab just in time to cast his vote.
Lewis, it seems, who had been absent for the previous three weeks due to surgery, recovered sufficiently to travel and vote “yes” on this particular bill.
Truth Can Oft Yield Unexpected Consequences
Regardless, it still comes down to those renegade Republican turncoats. After all, all politics are local.
Chad Pergram reported at Fox News:
- At the end of the day, most lawmakers who face potential electoral consequences, on both sides of the aisle, voted locally. Both Mark Kirk and Mike Castle are tinkering with Senate runs. Mr. Obama carried the district represented by Bono Mack. Reichert’s district sits a stone’s throw outside of liberal Seattle. He faces a tough re-election every year. Pending Senate confirmation, McHugh’s on track to become President Obama’s Army Secretary.
Mark Whittington, however, writes June 27 at Associated Content:
- Members of Congress, particularly Democrats, were obliged to vote for Cap and Trade for two reasons only. First, President Barack Obama wants it and it is not done for a Congress of his own party to not give a President what he wants so early in his administration. Second, Nancy Pelosi wanted it and she would break the knee caps of any Democrat who didn’t vote in favor of Cap and Trade.
Despite that, almost fifty Democrats crossed the aisle and voted against Cap and Trade. They knew how their constituents, who were melting down phone lines and stuffing email boxes in opposition, feel about being fleeced by the government for no good reason. Unfortunately eight Republicans, RINOs actually, voted in favor of Cap and Trade and provided the margin of victory.
The irony is that it is conventional wisdom that Cap and Trade, at least the House version, is going to die a very quick death in the Senate. That means that quite a few House members have alienated their constituents for no reason. In the meantime, embarrassing provisions from Cap and Trade, such as the regulatory regime for hot tubs, will continue to come to light.
Update 06/27/09 09:22 PM ET: Molly K. Hooper reported for The Hill:
- Minority Leader John Boehner (R-Ohio) had a few choice words about House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s (D-Calif.) landmark climate-change bill after its passage Friday.
When asked why he read portions of the cap-and-trade bill on the floor Friday night, Boehner told The Hill, “Hey, people deserve to know what’s in this pile of s–t.”
[...]
One Democrat was upset that his leaders would needlessly force vulnerable Dems to vote for a bill that will come back to haunt them. Mississippi Rep. Gene Taylor (D) voted against the measure that he says will die in the Senate.
“A lot of people walked the plank on a bill that will never become law,” Taylor told The Hill after the gavel came down.
Placed this under Clean Coal in Open Gov . This new technology can be used for so many other applications , breaking down the molecular structure of CO2 leaving a fine carbon , separating all other pollutants such as Mercury and Arsenic.
This will save and create jobs from Coal to to the Auto industry . This would have been impossible to achieve just a few years back . This is not in Text Books ~ Yet .
http://opengov.ideascale.com/akira/dtd/4841-4049
Why does our Government ignore technology that would clean up all our pollution.
Dr. Paul A. Curto sent this letter to Senator Inhofe, and let me post it here, thank you Paul.
Honorable sir,
Dr. James Tracy of your home state has some very interesting inventions which may become crucial to both our energy independence and our fight to stave off global warming.
I met Dr. Tracy online at PickensPlan, where he revealed some of his ideas. He is a truly gifted and prolific inventor. He has several other supporters who will also vouch for his abilities, Nelson Camus, and Charles Ivie. He has an application for a grant to assist in his research. Please look into his case. It may be a life saver for millions of Americans.
Sir, I served my Nation as an engineer and scientist for over 42 years, With NASA, the US Army, MITRE, and Dravo Corporation. I was Chief Technologist at NASA until I retired last year, and was known for my work in evaluating all of NASA’s most important technological discoveries. I know good ideas when I see one, and this has the right potentialities.
Thank you for your attention.
–Dr. Paul A. Curto, CEO Pure Power Inc.
Potomac, MD 20854
PurePowerCorp.Com should have already had funding. Why hasn’t it?
I am beginning to wonder if the American People can file a Class Action against the Congress of the United States. I know you cannot generally sue the government, but the dereliction of duty by these people is criminal, HOW CAN they pass a bill that is not only not read, but not even FINISHED being written? This is FUBAR and it continues to happen over and over.
This entire thing, not just this bill, but the cavalier behavior on BOTH sides of the aisle and the entire disregard for the “Spirit of the Constitution” let alone the REQUIREMENTS of the Constitution, makes me believe they have, in fact, instituted a Coup and are simply going the the motions in some sort of charade.
The MEDIA is a co-conspirator in this coup and needs to be named as well. The Democrats can yell “we won” all they want, and the Republicans can pretend they are not part of it, but is they think people voted for the complete dissolution of Constitutional Government, they are going to have a very rude awakening – and it will be long before 2010, I fear.
[...] $800 billion 1500 page National Energy Tax Bill passes House. Bamboozled Again! (Updated) [...]
FF, I hear ya! I have often wondered where the constitutional lawyers are during this debacle called the “Obama administration.”
Obama and the Dems are trying to force all this down our throats before the elections of 2010 because I think they KNOW they will no longer have a majority and will not be able to ramrod this sh*t down our throats.
There are rumors that if this crap and trade bill passes the Senate that Obama will veto it because of the penalties it imposes on imports. Is that not laughable? He’s worried about imports but NOT about the impact on the average American???? These people are trying to make ALL Americans poor. They all belong in jail.
We have to put a STOP to stuff like this.