Amid the shouts and demurrers and twisted rationalizations accompanying the ever-growing exposure of the Trump regime’s roster of crooked behavior, a tactical move by Senate Democrats barely made a ripple in the media Thursday.
Senators voted 41-53 against blocking Trump’s Affordable Clean Energy rule that eco-activists and others view as a gift to the fossil fuel industry. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer said, “Time is running out for the U.S. to meet the existential threat posed by climate change and that’s why this rule is such a grave mistake.” Among other things, the Environmental Protection Agency itself has stated that the ACE would mean 1,400 more deaths annually than would occur under the Obama era’s Clean Power Plan that the Trump rule replaces.
Knowing from the outset that they would lose, Democrats forced a vote anyway, seeing in it a matter with which to hammer vulnerable Republicans in the 2020 elections. Normally, Majority Leader Mitch McConnell could have refused to hold a vote. But under the Congressional Review Act, Congress can challenge federal regulations, and they could get around McConnell because bringing resolutions of disapproval to the Senate floor only requires the support of 30 senators. The 41 yes votes included 40 Democrats and Maine’s beleaguered Republican senator, Susan Collins. Three Democrats—Joe Manchin of West Virginia, Doug Jones of Alabama, and Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona—voted no.
The Obama administration’s 2014 Clean Power Plan mandated a sharp state-by-state reduction in greenhouse gas emissions from coal-fired electricity-generating plants. The ACE was finalized in August as the EPA ignored the avalanche of opposition contained in the half-million public comments Americans made regarding the rule. Twenty-three state attorneys general and a handful of cities have filed suit contesting the rule.
The CPP was designed to reduce U.S. power sector emissions 32% below 2005 levels by 2030. The ACE would only cut those emissions between 0.7% and 1.5%. Hammered out over several years, the CPP provided states with guidelines for cutting emissions. It was viewed as the main tool for the United States in meeting its pledge of emissions reductions under the Paris climate accord. But thanks to a lawsuit filed against the EPA by Scott Pruitt—then attorney general of Oklahoma, and soon to be Donald Trump’s first appointee to oversee the EPA—the U.S. Supreme Court blocked the plan in 2016 while the 27-state lawsuit Pruitt initiated worked its way through the courts. That became moot when the EPA under Trump announced it would come up with its own rule.
Under the CPP, states would have been spurred by incentives to push polluting coal-fired power plants offline sooner if they were unable to meet the emissions goals. But the ACE rule focuses attention on making individual power plants more efficient rather than guiding the creation of state emissions plans.
Industry and environmental groups responded predictably to the vote.
E&E News reporter Nick Sobczyk reports (from behind a paywall) that the Democrats were quick to use the vote as a cudgel in a race that could help them regain the Senate majority next November:
Less than an hour after the vote closed, the Colorado Democratic Party sent around a release blasting Republican Sen. Cory Gardner, who faces a highly competitive race in the state next year, for voting against the ACE repeal.
In that sense, the vote served its purpose: to frame Gardner and other vulnerable Republicans in states affected by climate change, such as North Carolina Sen. Thom Tillis, as anti-environmental green washers. Gardner in particular has leaned into his support for clean energy since his first run for Senate in 2014.
"The climate crisis is one of the most urgent threats facing Colorado, but Senator Gardner has consistently sided with Trump and corporate polluters over our clean air and climate action," Morgan Carroll, chairwoman of the Colorado Democratic Party, said in a statement. "Senator Gardner has tried to hide his toxic environmental record, but his actual votes override his phony rhetoric."
But while Democrats see the vote as giving them an advantage in the upcoming elections, Republicans who commented on it don’t appear to believe that supporting the ACE rule will hurt them at the polls.