Henry Waxman Sticks To Deadline On U.S. Climate [Scam] Bill

House Republicans said they were dead set against any cap and trade legislation and instead called for increasing domestic energy production, encouraging conservation and promoting alternative fuels -- ideas that an official of one environmental group said "look an awful lot like business as usual."

Representative Fred Upton of Michigan, the senior Republican on the House Energy and Commerce panel that will write the climate bill, told reporters: "The Democrats know that we have a pretty solid line in the sand" against cap and trade, which he called "a dagger to the Midwest."

Midwestern states rely heavily on coal, a major emitter of carbon dioxide, to power electric utilities.

Upton said he and fellow Republicans, as well as some Democrats, have so many amendments to the bill, including ones to kill cap and trade, that it could take up to two weeks for the panel to wade through them.

With no Republican support to count on, Upton speculated that Waxman was still "a handful of (Democratic) votes short" to pass a bill in the subcommittee.

No It's Not 1994 All Over Again--Not Yet - CBS News

According to today's Politico, some House Dems are fretting that Obama's climate proposals will suffer the same grim fate that health care reform did during Bill Clinton's first term. DCCC chair Chris Van Hollen, for one, has started warning that the House should "move cautiously" on the big Waxman-Markey energy bill if it's just going to die in the Senate anyway. He doesn't want vulnerable freshmen Dems to get screwed the way they did in 1994, when the House held a nerve-wracking vote to approve a (small) energy tax increase that got nixed by the Senate and turned out to be a Dem-killer in the midterms.

Indeed, the 1994 analogy has been sprouting up a lot lately.

Associated Baptist Press - Christian radio ads urge support for climate change [swindle] legislation

[Jim Ball, president and CEO of the Evangelical Environmental Network] said climate change is an issue of freedom because its impact on the poor "will rob them of opportunities to create better lives for themselves and their children."

"Overcoming global warming is the next great cause of freedom, and we need legislation that reflects these values," he said.

Ball, a graduate of Baylor University and Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, is best known for media coverage of his 2003 multi-state tour in a Toyota Prius emblazoned with signs reading "What Would Jesus Drive?"

Shimkus, GOPs to road trip against Obama climate change plan | Political Fix | STLtoday

Many Republicans argue that the Waxman-Markey bill is dishonest, preferring to call its “cap and trade” system of regulating carbon a “cap and tax” system. Republican leaders pointed at the closed door meetings at the White House as further proof.

“If you want to tax carbon emissions, the simplest most cost-efficient and most transparent means would be a carbon tax but the liberal Democrats are unwilling to go in that direction because the public will really know what the cost will be,” Shimkus said.