Charlie Wilson and his Blue Dog Democrats are Stalling Clean Energy Progress

[irishbobcat]

Charlie Wilson and his Blue Dog Democrats are Stalling Clean Energy Progress

LAST week, President Obama and Vice President Biden "urged a group of House Democrats at a White House meeting...to move forward with climate-change legislation," asking for "quick action" on the American Clean Energy and Security Act of 2009. After Blue Dog Democrats, representing oil and coal interests, stalled subcommittee actions on the bill last week, House Energy and Commerce Committee Chairman Henry Waxman (D-CA) announced yesterday that he could potentially "bypass regular order on a major climate change and energy bill and mark up the legislation before the entire 59-member panel," E&E News reported. However, Waxman said that "[n]o final decisions on process have been made." Beyond negotiating with fellow Democrats, Waxman and Rep. Ed Markey (D-MA), the authors of the bill, are facing steep opposition from conservatives, whose "solutions" amount to drilling for more oil and completely denying the climate catastrophe. Obama is hoping Congress can take a visionary approach. "He told us, sometimes we do things of real impact," Rep. Jay Inslee (D-WA) said after the White House meeting yesterday. "And none of us would want to look back in twenty to thirty years and think we had punted on something of a historic nature."

CORRALLING DEMOCRATS: With Obama making energy one of his four main domestic policy priorities, Democratic members of the House Energy and Commerce Committee have been hard at work seeking consensus on the issue. Yet after the White House meeting with Obama yesterday, Democrats "remained far apart on the critical elements, including goals for emissions reductions, mandates for renewable electricity like wind and solar power, and the issue of whether the government would give away any pollution permits rather than auctioning all of them."

Charlie Wilson will do anything to protect dirty coal and stop clean energy progress in America!

Dennis Spisak
Mahoning Valley Green Party
Ohio Green Party

www.ohiogreens.org
www.votespisak.org./thinkgreen/