If it doesn’t work the first time, rename it and try again. That’s the new strategy for a trio of Senators reviving a cap-and-trade bill that was previously a casualty of the Democrats’ sinking approval ratings. Senators Kerry (D-MA), Lieberman (I-CT) and Graham (R-SC) are now working on a new energy reform bill to cap carbon dioxide emissions. But this time around, according to Sen. Kerry, it’s not a climate bill.
Rewind to June of last year. The House narrowly passed a cap-and-trade bill while Rep. Pelosi said it was about four things: “jobs, jobs, jobs and jobs.” In a sense, she was right. It was about jobs. Jobs lost, that is.
The business community, consolidated and led by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, was largely against any new regulation that would increase energy prices. This included the House bill. The Heritage Foundation concluded the House bill would cause net job losses of 1.9 million by 2012. Moreover, the average family of four would pay an additional $3,000 in higher energy and other related costs each year between 2012 and 2035.
House Democrats and Republicans knew the bill would necessarily raise energy prices. Republicans proposed amendments that would have suspended the regulation if gas reached $5 per gallon; if electricity prices increased 10 percent over 2009 rates; or if unemployment rates hit 15 percent. But each amendment was defeated by the Democrats.
The cap-and-trade bill, ultimately passed by the House, stalled in the Senate and took a back seat to health care. If anything, weak approval ratings for the Democrats and the possibility of losing their majority in November almost assured voters that there would be no more politically treacherous issues aside from health care.
But that all changed when the EPA got involved. In December, the EPA issued an ‘endangerment finding’ on greenhouse gases (GHGs). In other words, the EPA formally declared GHGs a dangerous pollutant and now assumes the authority to regulate carbon dioxide emissions if Congress does not.
The EPA, however, is nothing like a careful surgeon. Instead, it regulates with blunt uniformity. According to the Clean Air Act, the EPA would be forced to regulate any business that emits at least 250 tons of a pollutant, such as carbon dioxide, per year. The average restaurant emits about twice that.
So what does that mean? It means that every fast food restaurant owner, retailer and manufacturer will have to retrofit his or her building with costly technology to meet the EPA’s draconian requirements. Or pay a fine.
This maneuver by the administration has agitated the business community and has given the Senate a ‘good cop-bad cop’ excuse to pass climate change regulation. Either accept the deal Congress is going to offer, or get pounded by the EPA.
Yet to call version 2.0 a ‘climate bill’, like its stalled predecessor, would fit the definition of insanity. So Sen. Kerry told reporters: “What we are talking about is a jobs bill. It is not a climate bill. It is a jobs bill, and it is a clean air bill. It is a national security, energy independence bill.”
Sen. Kerry can call the bill what he wants. But in the end, the Kerry-Lieberman-Graham bill will be nothing more than a less devastating alternative to the EPA. Just don’t call it a climate bill…
Neil Rosekrans
Photo: Sen. Kerry at UN climate summit in Copenhagen
Photo Credit: Heribert Proepper/AP
Neil Rosekrans is a founder and partner of StateBrief.com. He has been a guest political commentator for the Arizona Law Channel, NBC's Sunday Square Off and The Terry Gilberg Show on KFYI. Neil earned his undergraduate degree from Cornell University and earned his MBA and Masters in Public Policy, with an emphasis in International Relations, from Pepperdine University.
Neil and his wife, Beth, live in Scottsdale, Arizona. 
I agree with you here. The only thing I’d add is that I think it’s very possible that the EPA regulation will not survive a court challenge. I’m not an administrative law expert, but I know enough about it to know there are several grounds on which to challenge the law based on the EPA’s lack of authority to regulate CO2.
It is only natural that they re-frame the bill, to remove the charged “climate bill” label. The Clinton/Gore admin tried to pass a “BTU tax” in the 90s, which failed, but if one looks closely at the Renewable Portfolio Standard laws, one will see that they achieve the same thing as a “BTU tax” and I think this was by design. This is just the way politics works. I do not completely agree with your position on this issue, but I just see this maneuver as part and parcel of the political process.