Lost: Graham will vote for Dirty Air amendment, wants more drilling
Senate Energy and Natural Resources Chairman Jeff Bingaman (D-N.M.) said yesterday he was confused by Graham’s demands for what needs to be done to win his vote on the climate bill.
Sen. Lindsey Graham’s keeps issuing contradictory and cryptic statements on the climate bill (see Graham is incoherent). He is now officially more incoherent and incomprehensible than Rand Paul and the TV series Lost respectively, as E&E News PM (subs. req’d) makes clear:
“I know we need to enhance on- and offshore drilling, to make us more energy independent, but I’m not willing to say let’s go forward boldly now until I find out what happened,” he said.
There are at least a half-dozen investigations under way on the spill. “I just need someone to stop it, tell me what happened, and how we fix it,” Graham said. “I don’t need 500 people to tell me what happened.”
I feel the exact same way about the final episode of Lost!
Graham also said he could vote for a Senate energy and climate bill, but he must see offshore drilling provisions he originally negotiated with Kerry and Lieberman added back into the bill. At issue is language stripped out at the behest of Sen. Bill Nelson (D-Fla.) that would maintain a 2006 law to keep rigs 125 to 235 miles off Florida’s Gulf coast.
“They took the eastern Gulf provisions and dramatically changed that. I couldn’t live with that,” Graham said.
“I wouldn’t be the 60th vote for the drilling provisions in this bill, but I could be the 60th vote for this concept if it gets back to where it was before,” he added. “But I’m looking for more than 60 votes. You’re either going to get 40 votes or probably 70 votes.”
That position is not only incoherent, but it is incomprehensible and indefensible:
Bingaman also found fault with Graham’s reasoning that the climate bill needs to be put on hold while the Gulf of Mexico oil spill investigations continue. “I think the issue of what we do on climate change, putting a limit on emission on greenhouse gas emissions and a requirement that that be reduced, that can be done without some conclusion about this oil spill in the Gulf,” he said.
“I favor plugging the leak. I favor stopping the spill. But it’s hard to say why the failure to complete the investigation of that spill would be a justification for not limiting greenhouse gas emissions,” Bingaman added. “It seems to me a stretch.”
Certainly it’s not a good omen for the bill, whatever he means. The possibility that Kerry and Lieberman would return to the original language — allowing drilling near the Florida coast — seems as remote as the possibility that anybody is going to approve drilling off the coast of South Carolina for a long, long time.
And to add to Graham’s incoherence/hypocrisy, he supports Lisa “Dirty Air” Murkowski’s radical attempt to overrule science:
“I think it will pass,” said Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.). “There are a lot of people who will be in the camp of, ‘We should do it, not the EPA.’”
Graham is a co-sponsor of the disapproval resolution from Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) that would effectively halt EPA’s endangerment finding, the basis for its climate rules for cars and industrial facilities. The resolution, which needs 51 votes to pass, is expected on the floor by the week of June 7.
Murkowski’s bid is seen largely as a symbolic one given the resolution’s long-shot prospects in the House, as well as an expected veto from President Obama. Still, her effort is considered a critical early proxy for the Senate as Democratic leaders weigh whether they have the votes to pass a more comprehensive climate bill.
So far, Murkowski has 41 supporters, including three Democrats: Sens. Mary Landrieu of Louisiana, Blanche Lincoln of Arkansas and Ben Nelson of Nebraska. Graham said he thinks a majority of senators will ultimately vote for the resolution, though he predicted most would do so with the understanding that a broader bill must pass too that combines climate and energy issues in a manner different from the House-passed climate measure.
“Some people will say carbon shouldn’t be regulated at all, I think that’s the minority view,” Graham said. “I think the majority of the body will say that Congress should set the carbon regulations, not the EPA, which gets us back to … when Congress is going to do it and how we’re going to do it. I believe that you’ll never regulate carbon without having energy independence, without a more business-friendly framework than Waxman-Markey. That’s what we’ve been trying to do.”
Clears things up, no?
Related Posts:
- BREAKING: Sen. Graham walks away from climate and energy bill over immigration plans
- Chait and Klein: Lindsey Graham is Right
- Lindsey Graham says, “yeah,” there’s a chance for climate to move forward this year
- Is Obama blowing his best chance to shift the debate from the dirty, unsafe energy of the 19th century to the clean, safe energy of the 21st century?
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It does not take much head scratching to understand Senator Graham’s repeated flips on his support(or not) for climate legislation, in general, or, for that matter, support for the original version he helped to craft earlier this year.
As time went on and the teabaggers got stronger, he was being told his political future was on the line. Reluctant to seem like a coward by backing away from the KLG draft he began to create any number of reasons why he, in good conscience, could not support KL.
It started around the week before Earthday when he strongly sent the message he was supporting an energy bill that would also deal with air pollution…what a classic bait and switch. Then, he bagged the original plan to introduce KLG in a sacred ceremony scheduled for earth day because he did not want to be associated with the environmentalists frenzy about combining the two major events.
He got scared off and we should just accept that fact and go to Plan B. Anyone got a Plan B?
John McCormick
Graham got tired of getting wedgies in the congressional halls and cat calls from the far right threatening his job. A sad case of a man unwilling and unable to vote his convictions. I believe any earlier faith in Senator Graham coming through on this was poorly placed.
Krugman in today’s NY Times reports an major up-tic in corporate money going to the GOP with the Fossil Fuel Folks, FFF?, giving 76% to the GOP. I gave Graham the benefit of the doubt in is original support of the Climate Bill but it looks like he is true to his colors which is money above people.
Of course corporate self interests of money before people is so obvious that even the Tea Baggers should be getting a clue by now.
It would be delightfully ironic if the Tea Bag fringe had an epiphany of self survival and turned against their creators.
When I read his statements, I see a man who’s desperately trying to justify a energy independent future without believing in global warming. The fact is that we have enough coal to destroy ourselves, and if Lindsey gets his new compromise, we’ll be using it until it’s far too late. He believes in energy independence, but not in “Hell and High Water”.
It seems more and more that it’s coming down to whether we can fix coal or not. It seems like peak oil will fix the petroleum CO2 problem before any carbon cap would touch it. (That said, we’ll destroy all of our shorelines & fisheries sucking the last drops from the continental shelf, but I don’t think that’s fixable at this point.)
I agree with Lore- Graham choked. It’s almost impossible to find a Senator with backbone these days. Their statements are rehearsed and vetted by lobbyists, and they sold their souls many years ago.
Graham has caught the spreading republican “McCain Disorder”…..
Graham is just one of many, many impediments to a good Senate GW bill. The Tea Party, Republicans in general, loud-mouthed GW-deniers in the media, weak Democratic leaders, an enormously rich energy industry lobby, and an uncertain president with conflicted advisors. If global warming is to be stopped, somehow our scientists will have to mobilize – perhaps go on strike – raise money and dramatically march on Washington and try to take over our pitiful government. Moderation, rationality, patience, and calm seem to have reached their effective limits.
Graham is the greatest disappointment of 2010, I hope someone in SC could make a monument to “the man who could have prevented climate change, but didn’t”, this senator deserves nothing but shame.