A sad New Year's for cap and trade?
Cap and trade has no chance in 2010, Senate Democrats are saying.
At this point in our democracy’s media evolution, it seems almost churlish to point this out, but here goes: 2009 isn’t even over yet, so it feels a bit premature to rule things out for next year.
But Politico has quoted Sens. Mary Landrieu, (D-La.), and Evan Bayh, (D-Ind.), as saying that a climate change bill will not pass next year. Democratic senators already have too much on their plates with health care and the economy and they’re desperate not to further alienate voters.
Kent Conrad, D-(N.D.), put it most succinctly:
Climate change in an election year has very poor prospects. I’ve told that to the leadership.
We have two thoughts on this:
Lisa Lerer’s story seems to conflate climate bill with cap and trade at some points in her story, but at other times, she separates the two concepts.
But not all climate bills have cap and trade provisions and the concept is so malleable that its easy to slightly alter its form and call it something else (see the “public option” debate in health care).
For example, Sen. Maria Cantwell, (D-Wash.), and Susan Collins, (R-Maine), have put forward a cap and dividend bill that would return revenue from emissions auctions directly to consumers.
And the tri-partisan group of Lindsey Graham, (R-S.C.), Joseph Lieberman, (I-Conn.), and John Kerry, (D-Mass.), have offered the vague outlines of a climate change bill.
Which leads us to our second point,
There’s reason to think that the views of “moderate” Democrats won’t carry the day in this debate, as they did in health care. Graham has said he can attract Republican votes for a measure and some of the aforementioned collaborations suggest that there’s a reasonable chance of that happening.
Of course, it is possible that a climate bill will have to wait until 2011. But not because Mary Landrieu says so.
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