PrintApril 8, 2009
The Vote that (may have) Changed the World
In a procedural vote on April 1, 2009, 26 Democratic Senators joined all of the Republicans in defeating, for now, a climate change bill that would have allowed fast-tracking of President Obama's cap-and-tax proposal so that it could be passed as part of the current Federal budget. (Click here to see how your Senator voted.) Senator Lamar Alexander called this "the biggest vote of the year." The bill that would have passed would probably have resembled the Waxman-Markey discussion draft of The American Clean Energy and Security Act of 2009, a bill proposal designed to combat global warming by encouraging the use of "renewable" energy sources (nuclear energy providers need not apply). So it is possible to look closely at the Waxman-Markey draft to see what the Senate rejected.The draft is full of subsidies, while at the same time providing that electric utilities impose energy and efficiency standards on their customers to achieve one percent reduction of...(Read Full Article)
