Watching a Master at Work
Posted May 22, 2009 in Solving Global Warming
Last night I had the pleasure of watching Chairman Henry Waxman (D-CA) shepherd the American Clean Energy and Security Act (ACES) through the House Energy and Commerce Committee. The motion to "favorably report" the bill passed 33-25 after four grueling days of debate within the Committee, but it was the culmination of years of preparation and months of intensive work by Chairman Waxman, Energy Subcommittee Chairman Markey (D-MA), and their incredibly dedicated staff. When the final vote tally was read the standing room only audience of lobbyists, environmental advocates, and Congressional staff gave the Committee a well-deserved standing ovation for its efforts.
We have posted lots on the substance of ACES here, and next week we will post a review of the amendments adopted during this week's "markup" of the legislation. Today, I just want to focus on process. Over four days Chairman Waxman kept the Committee in session for 37 hours and considered 94 amendments. Republican opponents had threatened to require the entire bill to be read out loud and to offer more than 400 amendments in order to block Committee action. But in the end, not only did Chairman Waxman achieve his goal of reporting comprehensive clean energy and climate protection legislation before Memorial Day, he won the respect of supporters and opponents alike for the way he handled the process. Joe Barton (R-TX), the ranking Republican on the Committee, and a fierce opponent of limiting global warming pollution, was remarkably gracious in defeat. He praised Chairman Waxman for running a fair and open process and commended the majority and minority staff for their hard work.
Throughout the markup Chairman Waxman alternated consideration of Democratic and Republican amendments. The Democratic amendments were all pre-negotiated before they were offered and were designed to address specific concerns of wavering Members and build support for the bill, without undermining its effectiveness or breaking up its coalition of supporters. Republicans used their turns to offer amendments designed to score political points rather than improve the bill. Many followed the pattern of the Shimkus (R-IL) amendment: If X happens then all the other provisions of the legislation are null and void. In Mr. Shimkus' case, X was the closure of two or more coal mines. Other amendments had triggers based on electricity price increases, unemployment rates, or other statistics that opponents alleged would be made worse by the legislation. Mr. Barton insisted on a roll call vote on each amendment, and each was defeated. Chairman Waxman maintained his equanimity throughout.
Late last year, when Mr. Waxman won a Democratic Caucus vote to unseat Mr. Dingell and take over the chairmanship of the Energy and Commerce Committee some worried that the aftermath of the leadership fight would interfere with getting things done, but Chairman Waxman immediately took steps to repair his relationship with Mr. Dingell, naming him Chairman Emeritus, and giving him responsibility for developing health care reform legislation, an issue on which they see eye to eye. Others worried that Mr. Waxman is too liberal to successfully steer complex global warming legislation through the relatively conservative Energy and Commerce Committee. As Chairman of the Oversight and Government Reform Committee, Mr. Waxman had earned a reputation as a bit of a bomb thrower due to a series of hearings in which he hauled corporate executives and government officials before his Committee and thoroughly embarrassed them to expose one form of wrong-doing or another. Mr. Waxman had been using his oversight role to maximum effect. Energy and Commerce is a legislative committee, and legislating requires a different approach. Yesterday Chairman Waxman proved that he is a master of the art.
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Comments
William Litsch — May 22 2009 06:59 PM
Dan,
I was very disappointed to see your interview on Democracy Now. I have been a supporter of NRDC in the past. Sadly, you have changed my mind. I will probably never give to NRDC again. A waste of money I now see.
I am writing a book on this topic and I must say. You have no idea what you are talking about. Clearly your position at NRDC is more of a sinecure than anything useful because you have not done your research.
It is my hypothesis that you have Obama mania or an invested interest in this administration and so, blindly, are willing to "believe" that you will get something from nothing. This bill is worse than the European bill that promoted more pollution not less. It provides no real economic incentives to quit polluting. It may even make it worse. If you were a "good" economist you would know that whether or not it provides an incentive to reduce pollution depends entirely on how high the cap is and how easy it is to come by "free" credits. 85% sounds pretty easy. And the caps were made even less effective by reducing the targets from 20% to 17%. Way off in the future, I might add. Giving the industry plenty of time to make the remaining useful parts of the legislation nugatory. Your alacrity for a shameful give in to industry leads into the pageantry that this bill was designed to create. Maybe you are one of them. Maybe you don't care, and only want the appearance of a change. Maybe you benefit from the green marketing campaign. If this bill has a beneficial effect I will eat my own boots.
If you were a good historian you would know that more harm has been done by poorly thought out legislation pushed my those with good intentions who say, "This is the best that could be done politically," then has been by zealots of the opposition. If your mouth were a gun you would have shot your self in the foot by now.
Gordon Steen — May 23 2009 02:32 PM
Of course, environmentalists are disappointed in the political process. One only has to look at the credit card bill with it's attached guns in National Parks amendment to understand what is going on.
There is no way to take money out of this equation. We are out voted. Clearly, global warming is the wrong issue. The money issue is oil dependence and the end of free oil. That doesn't mean big business won't ignore it (look at GM), it just means that like $4 gas, the public can understand it.
Woody Pfister — May 23 2009 08:47 PM
That was then. Free Credits are now.
"President Barack Obama was emphatic during his campaign and after his election: The best way to fight climate change is to cap carbon emissions and auction off tradable permits to emit carbon. "If you're giving away carbon permits for free, then basically you're not really pricing the thing and it doesn't work -- or people can game the system in so many ways that it's not creating the incentive structures that we're looking for," he told the Business Roundtable in March.
His budget director, Peter Orszag, was blunter: "If you didn't auction the permit, it would represent the largest corporate welfare program that has ever been enacted in the history of the United States," he told the House Budget Committee in March."
Pay to Play, the Chicago Way
Woody Pfister — May 23 2009 08:55 PM
Waxman is some master, he doesn't know what's in the bill and hasn't bothered to read it to find out.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tRcq0Lxffwc
He may have even forgot already the he held a private auction for 85% of the credits that sold below "market" price.
Dan Lashof — May 26 2009 10:47 AM
William-
I'm sorry you feel that way. NRDC depends on its members and we are always sorry to lose a supporter. As I said on Democracy Now I believe that this is the best bill that could be reported by the Energy and Commerce Committee. It would establish an overall limit on the pollution that causes global warming that declines every year. This will end the era in which polluters can dump as much carbon dioxide as they want into the atmosphere for free.
For a discussion of how the permits are distributed, see my previous post.
NRDC is hardly the only organization to urge Members of the Committee to vote in favor of reporting the bill. Here's a list compiled by the Committee.
http://energycommerce.house.gov/Press_111/20090515/hr2454_supporterlist.pdf
-Dan
Tom Conlon — May 28 2009 09:57 PM
NRDC and the other environmental orgs on this supporters list have been sliding toward the accommodating middle for some time now. "It's only to be expected", I've told myself for years (since 1986). Someone has to step up and broker compromises to get anything done in DC. NRDC now excels in this niche (and BTW, Dan, your post demonstrates that you are as masterful in this art as the politician you extol).
That said, this ugliest of bills brings us to a crossroads. I just read a statement signed by Greenpeace, FOE, CfBD, and a dozen others: “Regrettably, we cannot support this legislation unless and until it is substantially strengthened... The response embodied in today’s bill is not only inadequate, it is counterproductive."
I am forced to ask myself, what kind of environmentalist settles for Pyrrhic incrementalism when an overwhelming consensus of scientists contend that the collapse of our planetary ecosystem is in sight? Have we really become that complacent? Have I?
This bill is a wake-up call, at least it is to me. Clearly I can't rely on NRDC, Sierra Club, Obama and others to go to the mat defending the scientific imperative in DC; that mantle has moved elsewhere.
I've got no choice but to start taking the yahoo monkeywrenchers more seriously, and rethink my allocations.