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Olympia Snowe’s support of the finance committee draft puts health care back in play, but without a public option. The Graham-Kerry compromise climate bill would start to cap carbon, but also allow coal to cash in. Can Obama’s progressive base settle for incrementalism? If Arriana Huffington speaks for the movement, HOPE may not hold out in the face of so little CHANGE during the 2010 mid-terms. </p>

After so much bad news on health care, the White House and Senate Dems are clinging to Senator Olympia Snowe’s support of the Finance Committee draft bill. While the bill does deliver on some of the key provisions the White House wanted - including insurance company restrictions on applicants with pre-existing medical conditions - it does not include a public option. What’s more, with CBO costing the “bipartisan” bill out somewhere north of $800 billion, there is little doubt that as amendments are made and more scrutiny is placed on estimated Medicare savings, a $1 trillion price tag is going to put Snowe’s support at risk (to say of nothing of some already-reluctant Democrats.

Similarly, the climate bill strategy that Senators John Kerry and Lindsey Graham proposed in their New York Times Op-Ed may make passage more likely as some pundits have argued. But, it cannot please progressives to see so many giveaways already - before the Senate has even begun trading horses in earnest. The Graham/Kerry compromise promises to make America “the Saudi Arabia of clean coal,” polishes the drills for more domestic drilling, and lifts restrictions to allow for faster proliferation of new nuclear plants. Not exactly the kind of thing that will warm hearts among hardcore conservationists.

But, a health care bill that restricts companies from discriminating against pre-existing conditions and a cap-and-trade regime (even one with a price collar and a lot of allowances) mean something to the progressive base, right? Not necessarily.

Arianna Huffington, a thought leader of the progressive movement, lambasted Obama and the incremental approach over the weekend on This Week and again on NPR’s On Point. Huffington’s argument is that “No Child Left Behind” is a cautionary tale that the Obama White House should study well. In her reckoning, the Act made no real progress in improving American education, but it gave the Washington establishment cover to say, “we dealt with education,” sapping momentum for any real and renewed action on the issue in the Obama administration.

Could the same happen to Obama’s health care and climate agendas if the Dems take pennies on the dollar for all of the political capital POTUS has invested? And will their base settle for the incrementalist approach anyway? He might have been able to argue the “old college try” if hopes had not been so high, promises so lofty, and the stage seemingly so well set (including the sort-of supermajority in the Senate). Instead, with little more than promises on progressive hot-buttons like Iraq and Afghan deescalation, Gitmo closings, repeal of “don’t ask, don’t tell,” health care and climate change, patience among progressives is wearing thin.

The political calculation is tricky. The White House - and Dems facing fights in the 2010 mid-terms - might be better to take outright losses on these watered-down bills, hold their line, and position the GOP as obstructionists in order to reenergize the progressive base.

Photo credit (CC) JD Lasica, socialmedia.biz

It is good to see that there are still some surprises in the world, and - in particular - in politics. Still, truly shocking political events - and reactions to them - are rare. Careful observers can see most Hill happenings coming from miles down the road and months ahead of schedule. We know some things will happen already, still our political and media culture waits out the inevitable before allowing events to capture headlines, ride roughshod over public opinion and exert themselves on political discourse.

Borrowing a page from Maureen Dowd’s “imaginings” playbook, this trip to 2010 explains how Washington’s worst-kept secrets will effect the climate change bill by collaring the President and Congressional Dems, and threatening our collective energy future.

FEBRUARY 10, 2010
WASHINGTON, DC

REACTION MIXED AS SENATE CLIMATE BILL GOES TO FLOOR
Critics Assail Compromises While Some Laud Any Action in Time of Political Turmoil

The Senate will likely take up floor debate of its climate bill this week after the proposed legislation was released from committee with considerable compromise put in place to help win votes from reluctant Senators who are facing election-year political pressure and mounting disappointing news about the economy and the war in Afghanistan.

The White House and Congressional Democratic leaders had hoped to have a climate change bill in place before the global climate change conference held in Copenhagen last December. Instead, American negotiators went to the United Nations conference with only the promise of continued domestic effort on greenhouse gas reduction, and observers felt that the Copenhagen conference’s result was all too similar to the Kyoto agreement it was supposed to build upon. While the world left Denmark with a resolution that features very strong aspirational emissions targets, there remains no enforcement mechanism in place, and it is unlikely that the world’s leading emitters will ratify any of the agreement’s most restrictive standards.

The Copenhagen failure took much of the momentum away from domestic climate change legislation, and action on energy and environmental reform has been further hampered as time gets closer to 2010’s mid-term elections and bad news on the economy mounts. Consistent with moribund projections, holiday sales figures were down for a second consecutive year, and the markets took a tumble as cautious investors reacted to retailers’ figures.

The tumble followed earlier market reaction to early January’s fourth quarter earnings announcements, which showed that in spite of stirring signs of economic strength, real recovery is still far from solidified.

The combination of slow sales and low earnings had brought markets back to a point where many observers felt valuation had leveled off from last fall’s slight recovery bubble. But, as final confirmation of double-digit unemployment became reality with last week’s announcement of jobless figures, the market dropped further.

All of the disappointing economic news made it impossible to get a climate change bill to the floor of the Senate without strong trade protections put in place for the domestic industries that are the most energy-intensive.

The protections spurred objections from global trading partners and concerns from observers worldwide that embedding carbon leakage tariff adjustments into the legislation amounts to protectionism and may further stunt economic recovery. Still, Senate negotiators had to include the provisions to win support from Midwestern Democrats who want both to claim progressive credentials by voting for a climate bill, but also needed any such bill to deliver not only protections - but also dollars - for heavy-emitting industries that employ their constituents.

The bill is expected to be debated next week after hearings on the President’s dismissal of General Stanley McChrystal are complete. In late 2009, Obama dismissed McChrystal from his post as commanding general in Afghanistan amid a very public disagreement about troop levels and strategy. The President has faced immense criticism from all sides after dismissing McChrystal. Republicans have criticized him for putting his own “yes man” in charge of executing the plan that McChrystal concocted because he subsequently adopted the recommendation to elevate troop levels. From his left, Obama has faced accusations that escalation is the wrong course and is a repudiation of the “call to action” that he received with his Nobel Peace Prize award last October.

Pundits had expected the Senate climb to be more difficult even than the House’s trials in passing the Waxman-Markey climate bill in early summer last year. Senate rules, election-year pressures and the fact that the House bill relied on heavy support from very populous blue states to win passage all spelled trouble for the Senate bill. Also, Obama’s own clout on the Hill was heavily damaged after last year’s failure to pass a strong health care bill.

Trade protections, heavy dilution of greenhouse has emissions targets, watered-down fuel and building energy efficiency standards, and huge cash handouts to utilities and the oil, gas and coal industries are just some of the elements of the final Senate bill that are drawing fire. As they did for the much-stronger Waxman-Markey bill, leading green groups like Greenpeace are opposing the Senate bill. Others insist that while the bill is imperfect, an incremental approach to energy and environmental legislation may be the best way to proceed.

Whatever the result, it now seems highly unlikely that the House and Senate could possibly agree on a bill in conference committee during this session, and any climate change legislation will likely have to wait until after mid-term elections. Of course, by that time, President Obama will be ramping up his own re-election bid and with hurt feelings among many of the constituencies that supported him in 2008 (gay rights groups and anti-war activists chief among them), Obama may choose to take on some more mainstream initiatives and leave climate change to the side for a while

Take it for what it is: my imagination. Except that we already know that most of this WILL certainly happen. What we don’t know yet, is how we’ll react.

Yesterday, Obama hopped a plane to Denmark for a whirlwind Scandinavian tour where it was thought that his presence and pitch might push Chicago’s bid for the 2016 Olympics across the goal line. Instead, ChiTown did not make it out of the first round of balloting. Safe to say that if the White House knew that, Obama would not have made the trip. The failure marked the first - and probably last - time that a sitting US President schilled in front of an IOC selection committee.

The miscalculation is a familiar one. Just after Labor Day, POTUS addressed a joint session of Congress to drive home his point on the urgency of health care reform happening this year. Now barely into October, the only Senate health care bill thought to have a chance on the floor emerged from committee with no bipartisan support. And, as October begins it is clear that if any health care reform bill is signed in 2009, it will not include the now notorious “public option.”

In both cases, the White House made the decision to put their guy out there, but - evidently - no one counted the votes beforehand. The situation is eerily similar to the early administration flubs in the appointments process (i.e., the Daschle false start and the Judd Gregg quagmire). Any good party whip knows that you do not bring a bill to the floor until you know how the roll is going to be called.

As a result of Denmark, Obama winds up wearing a piece of a defeat that was inevitable and it was not even his fight. The Chicago Olympics story is clearly being played up for everything - and more - than its worth by the Right, but it is worth considering why - given that the Chicago bid was circling the drain - Obama let himself get dragged down with it?

When the call came asking for his support, White House staffers should have told the Chicago team to spend 48 hours having coffee with everyone who held a vote, and bring back their tally. If it looked close, then Obama has a tough call to make. But, if they cannot bring back a straw poll or if they bring back numbers that show the Windy City being blown away, then the White House has an easy answer: “love to help, but…”

As the world closes in on December’s big UN climate change conference — back in Copenhagen — it begs the question: is the White House strategy informed by good ground-level information on where other parties sit? Clearly, that strategy includes putting pressure on reluctant Senators with the prospect (read: threat) of EPA regulation of emissions in the absence of comprehensive legislation, even something as watered-down as Waxman-Markey. The upside to handing things off to Lisa Jackson is that it may force the hands of some of the upper Midwest Dems Obama needs to get to 60. And, even if it is not enough of a prod to move a bill through the Senate, it allows Obama to fly his flag in Copenhagen.

But, what if they are not close to 60? What if the lever is not the right one to swing the votes they need. Based on their recent due diligence, it is difficult to say whether the White House even knows where their votes are, who can be swung, and how. That said, should they roll the dice with an EPA plan? How will the inevitable backlash inside the US look on the global stage?

Strong political interests are already lining up against the idea of an executive power move on carbon, and with a lot of Dems looking more vulnerable for the mid-terms in 2010, you have to wonder if the move does not just paint Obama back into a corner and have allies running in the other direction on climate change.

On the campaign trail - in spite of Reverend Wright - Obama earned the gloss “No Drama Obama.” A little less than a year into his tenure as President, the shine is wearing off.

Flickr photo by RobBeer.

The House Waxman-Markey bill has drawn criticism for being too friendly to utility companies, who would be handed a large percentage of the carbon credit allowances created. That criticism has come not only from environmental advocates who are concerned that free allowances will undermine the value of a cap, but also from other business interests who see the credits creating a potential windfall for utilities - especially those who already generate much of their power from cleaner fuels.

The Chamber’s opposition to Waxman-Markey is understandable when you consider that they represent a broad cross-section of business sectors, including many that did not fare as well in the negotiations as Waxman-Markey took shape. For their part, the Chamber has responded to the recent defections by noting that it only opposes the House bill itself, and is not opposed to the idea of climate-change legislation. According to their COO David Chavern, “Congress should do everything it can to promote and incentivize technology development and other policies that allow us to control carbon in ways that don’t trash the economy.” The fact that the Chamber’s site was unavailable on the morning of Exelon’s announcement indicates that the public may not be ready for so nuanced a position.

Might the departures be a harbinger of movement away from the Chamber across the entire utility sector? Or, should they be viewed as evidence of a fracture within the industry? Utilities that rely more heavily on coal and other dirty fuels share the Chamber’s concerns about cap-and-trade’s impact on the cost of their power. By contrast, PG&E, PNM, Exelon and others that are already invested heavily in cleaner fuels can afford to appear green. It may even be profitable.

The Chamber is in the news right now, but the place to watch as the Senate picks up debate of its own bill will be the utility trade group, Edison Electric Institute, which represents the investor-owned companies on both signs of the fuel type divide. EEI has already been engaging Senate leaders in a way that tries to split the difference for its membership: they are not running from Waxman-Markey, but they have some suggestions for improvement on the Senate side.

This dust-up may be all the more costly for utilities, their trade group and the Chamber if long-term discord is fomented for naught. The Senate will need 60 votes to get a bill. It will be tough to get there as Democrats hailing from industrial and agricultural states have the 1993 BTU Tax debacle in their memories and a 2010 election year in their sights. And, with political fallout that could be even more dramatic than the squabbles that are now unfolding in the business community, there may not be a Senate climate bill in 2009. Either way, the utility industry will be left to mend fences. The questions now are whose fences, and how many?

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The White House still lists climate change legislation as one of its priorities, but with Senate action on a bill getting pushed deeper into September - and closer to oblivion for 2009 - greens cannot help but worry that their cause will not only be eclipsed by health care, but also by the economy generally, unemployment specifically, and even foreign policy issues like the escalation in Afghanistan.

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However, it also comes in for some anger from the rest of us, who do support the idea of funding a transfer to a renewable energy economy, but worry that we will pay higher costs and believe that the Cap and Trade bill gives too many initial free allowances to polluting industries. But this anger may be unwarranted.

Consumers are shielded from rising energy costs with most of the allowances:

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It is not clear that President Obama and Majority Leader Harry Reid (pictured left with New Mexico Democrat Jeff Bingaman - another key climate voice) can win a simple majority for carbon-capping climate change legislation this year, with industrial state Dems already defecting, but the lift for Reid and his whips will be even tougher: they cannot overcome a GOP filibuster without a 60 vote super-majority.

If those Senators in favor of climate legislation get the 60 votes they need to block a filibuster and pass a climate bill, they likely can’t do it without a little help from these six. These are the six Senators that lobbyists will be courting, the White House will be pressing, and you should be watching in the coming days and weeks as the Senate addresses climate change.

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One universal difficulty is the continuing cost gap between renewable and fossil fuels. Creating an incentive program that works within the prevailing market - even a heavily regulated one - without interfering with normal market operation is very difficult when the price points are so far apart. Internalizing some of the costs of burning fossil fuels would help close that gap, and that is what cap-and-trade is all about: promote and subsidize clean energy and put downward pressure (both economically and through command and control) on dirtier fuels.

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The Markey Select Committee on Energy Independence and Global Warming is investigating the fake letters sent by the lobbying firm Bonner & Associates claiming the elderly were opposed to the climate bill for fear it would raise utility costs. Five more suspected forgeries were released today bringing the grand total to 58 letters under investigation. 

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Following on Red Green and Blue’s lead last week, today’s New York Times editorial notes that the White House and their Congressional allies on cap-and-trade have all but acknowledged that the climate change argument will not be enough - on its own strength - to win support for comprehensive energy and environment legislation in 2009. So, while climate-based arguments by the movement’s superstars - like Al Gore -   are gaining wider public acceptance and near-unanimous adoption in the intelligentsia, the case is still not enough to win political support when the Senate takes the issue up in the fall.

Last week brought us climate as a security threat and White House officials are continuing to float trial balloons throughout August as they grope for a communications strategy. This week’s angle: green jobs. Steven Chu has been making the green jobs pitch a strong part of his summer road show. He continued to beat the drum as part of a round table discussion with Gore and others at Senator Harry Reid’s National Clean Energy Summit 2.0 last week in Las Vegas. Taking the measure of the two approaches, the Boston Globe editorial page joined today’s NYT in bringing the White House’s previously tacit acknowledgment of the need for a new course out into the open.

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In a recent Zogby telephone poll conducted to gauge public opinion on the the Waxman-Markey climate bill, the results showed that a majority of Americans are finally behind climate legislation. The Waxman-Markey climate bill sets out to limit greenhouse gases in the US in order to combat climate change. The bill was just narrowly passed in congress last June by a vote of 219-212.

In the recent past, Americans have shown no interest in changing policy to limit greenhouse gasses, yet shockingly the results of this latest poll show that a whopping 71% of Americans support this bill. The poll also showed that Americans of every age, income group, and political affiliation support the bill much more than previously thought. An enormous win for those of us who want to see reduction in greenhouse gasses.

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The decision to do so was made even harder after he received five letters from local constituency groups, including a Hispanic advocacy group and a local chapter of the NAACP, opposing the legislation. Or so he at first thought. According to an investigation by DailyProgress, it turns out those letters weren’t what they appeared to be and were in fact forged by Washington DC-area lobbyists.

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We know a bit about the current situation on climate change. We know which countries are emitting the most global warming emissions. We know that the EU is actively implementing policies to get their emissions down and are serious about keeping climate change at the top of the priority list, even in one of the biggest economic struggles in history. We know that little nations like Tuvalu are working to address climate change. We know that ambitious and engaged countries are running into unseen problems and are unsure where to go in the future. We know that the US is looking to pass a climate bill for the first time and could change history in the process, and the USDA supports it but climate change groups, consumer advocate groups, and social equity groups are quite concerned about some of the changes made by the House of Representatives at the last minute. We know that China, India, and Brazil’s growth in greenhouse gas emissions have skyrocketed (several times faster than developed countries’ still growing emissions) in the past two decades.

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Climate change? Not so much. If Jon Stewart is snoozing, we know that the rest of America - a goodly percentage of which is far across the spectrum from Stewart and outwardly hostile to climate change arguments - is tuned all the way out. That is partly because climate change, energy and the environment still are considered Birkenstock and granola issues. The Obama operatives that are still engaged on climate change have finally started to tweak the message in a way that might help sell a bill even to science skeptics and the generally apathetic.

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Solar is already a source of power. Now some hope solar projects’ striking appearance can also make them a powerful marketing tool.

For the Fourth of July, concentrating solar-thermal startup eSolar programmed a quarter square mile of mirrors in Lancaster, Calif., to form the American flag and the Statue of Liberty.

The point? To celebrate Independence Day, and to help lobby for the American Clean Energy and Security Act, also known as the Waxman-Markey bill, which would enact a carbon cap-and-trade program and other emission-reduction measures if approved and signed into law. The House of Representatives passed the controversial bill last month, and the Senate is now considering it.

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“I believe in climate change for a very important reason,” said Colbert during his show last night, “so I can market the new Colbert Report Green. It’s just like the regular Colbert Report except we reduce emissions by jumping on the bandwagon.” Watch it:

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These is something in this bill for almost everyone. There is also something for almost everyone to hate. Alan During gives 14 things he love and 6 he hates about Waxman-Markey.

It’s no surprise that the United States Chamber of Commerce and the National Association of Manufactures oppose this bill, but so does Greenpeace and Friends of the Earth. Dow Chemical and Ford Motors support it.

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