Word: bille
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...fact, the Republican leadership spent last week trying to create not just a new litmus test for climate action but a new third rail for American politics: It wants any climate bill that causes the slightest increase in energy prices to be seen as a non-starter. "Any action should not raise the cost of gasoline or energy to American families," said Oklahoma Senator James Inhofe, the longtime leader of the denial-and-delay crowd, and his words were echoed by many others. That's an impossible standard to meet, and if the Republicans succeed in establishing it, Congress...
Lieberman-Warner, like any cap-and-trade bill, would increase the cost of energy derived from fossil fuels while giving clean, alternative energies an enormous boost. In other words, it would drive up gasoline prices and coal-powered electricity rates in the short term (though by smaller amounts than the doomsayers were claiming last week) while delivering far greater energy savings over the long term - by unleashing a clean energy economy that creates jobs and helps free the U.S from dependence on foreign...
...time to ask panicky voters to think about such a deal. And the Republican leaders were only too happy to exploit the high cost of energy. A G.O.P. strategy memo made public by Democratic leader Harry Reid summarized it this way: "The goal is for a theme (example: climate bill equals higher gas prices) each day, and the focus is much more on making political points than in amending the bill... or affecting policy...
Republican leader Mitch McConnell had an amendment ready that would suspend the bill if it caused gasoline prices to rise by any amount. If that amendment ever went to a vote, it would force the bill's supporters to come out in favor of higher gas prices, and the Republican TV attack ads would produce themselves. No wonder moderate Dems wanted Reid to ditch the bill. At a meeting of Senate Democratic legislative directors, on Monday, June 2 - the day the Senate took up the bill - staffers were howling that Reid and Boxer were leading their bosses into the Valley...
Reid brought the bill to the floor despite the exquisitely bad timing because climate change is his top domestic priority and because the issue won't be any easier to debate when a gallon of gasoline costs $5 or $6. Barack Obama was busy clinching the nomination and didn't show up for the debate (neither, for that matter, did John McCain). So, for the first couple of days of the fiasco, as the Republicans deployed parliamentary delay tactics and trotted out bogus studies that "proved" the bill would wreck the economy, the story line seemed to be this: What...