WASHINGTON (AP) -- The authors of sweeping energy legislation stalled in the Senate said Tuesday they were prepared to scale back their bill to get Republican support.
In the short lived, soon to be over, two year Democratic majority, the consistent theme has been propose a bill that contains little (Wall St) or no (health care) reform, claim they lack votes for even that Potemkin "reform" bill despite a solid majority in both houses, offer to gut the bill of any value in return for GOP support, fail to get that support and then pass the useless legislation to claim "progress" and ask for re-election from an increasingly skeptical electorate.
The White House, which never proposes ANY legislation that actually fixes US problems, is always on board to gut the already gutless legislation.
Sens. John Kerry and Joe Lieberman made the comments after meeting at the White House with fellow senators and President Barack Obama, who is pushing for action in the wake of the Gulf oil spill.
Even with the Gulf oil crisis destroying an entire ocean, thousands of miles of beaches and hundreds of square miles of wetland, destroying hundreds of thousands of jobs, the Obama White House and Democratic leadership refuses to even propose a solution.
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has done the 20 years of science that says minimum requirement is 80% reduction in CO2 from 2005 level by 2050.
Kerry/Lieberman's "American Power Act" is already weak asUnion of Concerned Scientists analysis shows.
Specifically related to the $1T oil wars that GOP want Americans to pay for with their Social Security benefit, the Union of Concern Scientists notes:
The plan should reduce U.S. dependence on oil and other petroleum products by at least 7 million barrels per day by 2030, which is nearly three times as much oil as the United States currently imports from the Persian Gulf.
So here we go again. A major problem for US, energy inefficiency, leading to oil use, oil wars, oil terrorism, oil trade deficits and climate change which threaten US survival. A another major problem getting worse. A weak proposal that begins to address problem but needs to be strengthened, is instead gutted by White House and Democratic majority who fail to put US national interest first and fail to govern.
The public, driven to frustration and anger by the Democrats failure to govern, will vote against them in November, given no choice but to vote against them, but will be punished further by a dangerously unhinged extremist GOP majority. A GOP that will bring back the failed ideology of deregulation and massive deficits and debt that is the main cause of current economic, energy and environmental problems. Problems that are killing US. Problems the Democratic President and Democratic majority refuse to fix.