June 26, 2009 07:46 PM UTC

Climate Bill Debate Underway; How Will Colorado Moderates Vote?

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• by: Colorado Pols

UPDATE: Markey votes yes, Salazar votes no.

As the Pueblo Chieftain reports:

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi is trying to round up Democratic support for a vote on legislation to combat climate change, but Colorado Rep. John Salazar is among the holdouts.

Salazar, a Democrat in his third term, said he is concerned that the proposed bill to set emission limits on power utilities and other caps on carbon emissions would translate into significantly higher utility costs for consumers across the 3rd Congressional District.

“While I am reviewing the bill and have not yet made a final decision, it is fair to say that I have serious concerns about the legislation and the impact on my constituents,” Salazar said in a statement Thursday. “I agree the issue of climate change must be addressed, but that does not mean I can support dramatically increasing utility rates on my constituents, at a time when I feel the economy is just starting to stabilize across the state.”

And the Denver Post reports on Betsy Markey’s red-district freshman dilemma:

…the vote is an especially dicey one for Markey, who has yet to take a public position. A first-term Democrat in a moderate district, Markey is likely to be one of the GOP’s biggest targets in 2010, and they would love nothing more than to see her vote “yes.”

Environmental groups also hope Markey supports the bill. Defenders of Wildlife Action Fund poured $1.5 million into her campaign – the group’s biggest push for any House candidate in the country – and they expected her to be a key supporter in the push for a global warming bill.

But as late as Thursday afternoon, Markey spokesman Ben Marter said his boss was still pondering the vote.

“She’s looking at it through an economic lens,” he said…

Labeling it a massive energy tax, Republicans have claimed the average family would pay $3,100 more for their electricity once the bill’s most stringent measures kick in. A recent study by the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office found the increase would be $173 per family per year.

While environmental groups are watching nervously to see whether Markey and other swing votes land on their side – the League of Conservation Voters announced this week that it wouldn’t support any Democrat in the next election who voted against it – Republicans are drooling at the prospect that they do exactly that.

House minority leader Rep. John Boehner, R-Ohio, called the bill “one of the defining debates of the 2010 cycle.” Colorado GOP chairman Dick Wadhams said that if Markey votes for the bill, “it will seal her fate, in my opinion.”

Our view: The GOP estimate of what this bill will cost is nothing short of scare-tactic lunacy, but that doesn’t really matter if they’re able to drown out the facts with enough bombast, which you can be assured they intend to do. But no matter how hard they try, we just don’t think that Americans are going to have nearly the problem with this bill that Dick Wadhams would have you believe. In fact, as the Washington Post reported Wednesday,

Three-quarters of Americans think the federal government should regulate the release into the atmosphere of greenhouse gases from power plants, cars and factories to reduce global warming, according to a new Washington Post-ABC News poll, with substantial majority support from Democrats, Republicans and independents.

This poll indicates a little less (though still majority) support for the specific cap-and-trade approach being debated today, but we attribute that to the kind of fall-off you get any time a contentious buzzword like ‘cap-and-trade’ is invoked in a poll. Bottom line? We’re just not seeing the scary political consequences everybody keeps talking about.

Postscript: yes, we all heard yesterday how Rep. Salazar oafishly implied to Post columnist Susan Greene that all this rain we’ve been getting might disprove climate change. We’re going to charitably assume he was joking, with a note that on the off-chance he wasn’t, well, that would be about the dumbest thing we’ve heard this side of Rush Limbaugh’s first-hour monologue. We do, however, know a quick way he could redeem himself with the green community today…