Florida Today: Reading the bill that no one read
Friday, July 10, 2009
One of the biggest knocks against the 1,428-page clean-energy bill recently passed by the U.S. House is that no one read the whole thing before voting—including Brevard County’s two representatives.
So I hear.
Nevertheless, Rep. Suzanne Kosmas, D-New Smyrna Beach, joined all other Florida Democrats in voting “yes” on the American Clean Energy and Security Act as she explained here Sunday.
Rep. Bill Posey, R-Rockledge, joined all other Florida Republicans in voting “no” on the bill, which would spend big to develop energy besides oil, mandate new fuel-efficiency standards for cars and homes and start an exchange for industry to buy and sell pollution credits.
Did either read the massive bill to know whether it was as good—or as bad—as their party leadership said? For that matter, how do they wade through all the other legislation?
I put the question to their respective offices.
“Congresswoman Kosmas and her staff thoroughly reviewed the bill, and she supports it because it will create jobs, provide opportunities to retain the shuttle program’s highly skilled work force, and help revitalize the Space Coast’s economy,” Marc Goldberg, the representative’s press secretary, said in a written statement.
Posey said he and his staff divvied up the bill and “kind of triaged it,” as they do with most bills. But Democratic leaders added 350 pages of amendments overnight, none of it available before the floor debate and vote.
“I vote no on anything they will not let you read,” Posey told me from Washington on Wednesday. “Next of all, it’s going to cost families too much. Next of all, it’s going to cost us jobs.”
Weighing benefits
Updated summaries of the bill abound, including a three-page report by GovTrack.us, a free, nonpartisan online service of the Library of Congress. I digested it during a 15-minute PowerBar break at our offices off U.S. 1 near Melbourne Wednesday.
That summary outlined the biggest sheer effort in our lifetimes to free our economy from its dependence on oil and to cut smog and other pollutants that have already damaged our world. It’s a Manhattan Project for alternative energy, something many of us called for last summer when gas hit $4 per gallon.
The downside: Uncle Sam expects industry to buy $648 billion in tradable “carbon credits” at auction. Polluters probably will pass that cost to customers.
Buried information
But there’s much more buried in the energy bill. As I prepared to review it online, a warning window popped up: “This bill is very large, and loading it may cause your Web browser to perform sluggishly, or even freeze.”
In 30 minutes of browsing, I learned:
- The Democratic authors don’t trust China and India to also curb air pollution. The bill requires the U.S. trade representative to report annually to Congress and the media on their progress.
- They acknowledge it could cost more. The bill includes tax credits for poor people who experience “reductions in their purchasing power.”
- It mandates expansion of an “electric vehicle infrastructure.”
- It shells out money for states and Indian tribes to use satellites to model the impact of climate change on wildlife and wilderness.
See for yourself. I posted it on our Brevard Watchlist blog at floridatoday.com
This article is reprinted from http://www.floridatoday.com
