Cash For Clunkers is in the rearview mirror. Health Care Reform is looming large on the horizon. And Climate Legislation is, um...Well, where exactly on the legislative map is the long-promised Senate cap-&-trade bill?
I can't help but think of the current Congressional recess as something of a Christmas Break for lawmakers. One year, before I left junior high, our school's Powers That Be decided mid-term exams would be held after Christmas vacation. All the better to study during those two-weeks of free time, right? The result was papers and tests before the holiday, exams immediately afterward, and a foreboding feeling every minute in between (when we weren't watching the respective Thermo Misers doing their annually televised pagan dances).
That's where members of Congress seem to be right now. They're tucked away in their home districts with relatively safe votes on the CARS Program in their back pockets, but Big Things are lying ahead almost always in the backs of their minds. And, naturally, much of the country is wondering if Climate Legislation is indeed A Big Thing this year.
I know, I know...a long preamble to what was a promised delivery, my interview with Kenneth Green on The Energy Report. He co-authored a Washington Post op-ed on the likelihood that the Senate will take up a climate bill this fall and whether it will have enough momentum to pass. And, surprisingly enough from a conservative think tank, Ken and fellow AEI scholar Steven Hayward both see the merit in one Senate Democrat's mostly overlooked climate proposal.
By the way, not only is Ken an enviro scientist who has worked with the UN's IPCC, he's also a Valley Guy. Yep, straight from the San Fernando Valley. Not that the former UCLA Bruin has any Val-Gal accent.
And since I did make the reference, is now a good time to take nominees for the lawmakers who most resemble the Heat and Cold Misers? I mean, we do have another two weeks before Washington awakens.
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