Democratic Senators Push for Climate Bill This Year
Business Week – March 22 (Bloomberg) — Twenty-two Democratic senators urged that the Senate take up energy and climate-change legislation this year focused on “jobs and reduced dependence on foreign oil.”
The senators, including Sherrod Brown of Ohio and Maria Cantwell of Washington, said agreeing on a measure to fight global warming and revamp U.S. energy use is important to the economy and national security.
“We recognize that achieving agreement in the Senate will be a challenge, but across the country, Americans are coming together behind this effort,” the lawmakers said in a March 19 letter to Majority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada.
The push to move forward with President Barack Obama’s goal of capping greenhouse gases blamed for climate change comes after a lengthy partisan battle over health-care legislation. The fight may have hurt chances of getting a climate-change measure through Congress this year, said Kevin Book, an analyst at Clearview Energy Partners LLC.
“Climate and energy legislation odds are now less likely,” Book, a Washington-based managing director for analysis, said in a report today.
