Articles by Brian Beutler

Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders is no fan

Some harsh words just in from Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.):

Keeping tabs on who’s backing America’s Climate Security Act

If all goes as planned, the full Senate Environment and Public Works Committee will begin hearings on the Lieberman-Warner America's Climate Security Act in the next week or two. The bill's first real hurdle will be making it through that committee.

Right now, there's little reason to expect that any Republican on the committee other than John Warner (R-Va.) himself will vote for it. Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.) spoke critically of it at the first subcommittee hearing last week, and Sen. George Voinovich (R-Ohio) took to the podium of the National Press Club two days later to pillory the bill:

Green groups battle over climate bills in the Senate

When writer and climate activist Bill McKibben took to the pages of The Washington Post late last month to demand that legislators and activists back the most ambitious climate-change bill in the U.S. Senate, it was more than a call to action — it was a public salvo in a contentious behind-the-scenes battle. < While […]

America’s Climate Security Act gets its first hearing

The U.S. Senate held its first hearing today to examine America's Climate Security Act, the new climate-change bill introduced last Wednesday by Sens. Joe Lieberman (ID-Conn.) and John Warner (R-Va.). Given that the hearing was convened by a subcommittee that Lieberman chairs and on which Warner is ranking member, it should be no surprise that the expert witnesses overwhelmingly approved of the legislation.

Normally at subcommittee hearings, members of the minority party are less inclined to attend. Their voices are overwhelmed, their issues are not at stake, and their input often isn't appreciated in any meaningful way. As today's hearing convened, though, the Republican side of the stage was at capacity -- every seat filled by its rightful senator, and staffers seated and standing behind them -- while on the Democratic side, less than a handful of people showed up.

One of them was Bernie Sanders, independent of Vermont who caucuses with the Democrats; he was the sole official voice speaking up for significant strengthening of the bill. Sanders stood by the work he'd done with Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) in crafting a much stricter climate bill. He called for incentivizing clean energies like wind, solar, and geothermal; pointed out the great opportunity a new energy regime would present for creating new jobs; and warned that insufficient action could spell calamity for billions of people. (Boxer could not attend, according to a letter distributed by her staff, because of the wildfire crisis in California.)

On the Republican side, some senators -- usual suspects like James Inhofe (R-Okla.) and George Voinovich (R-Ohio) -- opposed the legislation outright. But many others simply wanted to express their concerns that the bill might hurt the American economy or that it featured too few subsidies for the nuclear and coal industries.