Senate version proceeds.
Boxer set to tackle climate change bill
By David Whitney - dwhitney@mcclatchydc.com
Published 12:00 am PST Wednesday, December 5, 2007
WASHINGTON – After 20 hearings and countless speeches on the Senate floor warning of the risks of failure, a key committee starts work today on historic legislation to dramatically reduce global warming.
It's a tall order. The Senate Environment and Public Works Committee's chair, Sen. Barbara Boxer, the chamber's leading liberal, said she was up to the task.
"This is the biggest week of my life," the California Democrat said Monday.
Republican critics, led by the committee's senior Republican, Sen. James Inhofe of Oklahoma, also are energized for the fight. Inhofe is a global warming skeptic who believes that rising temperatures have more to do with cyclical changes and not with the burning of fossil fuels such as oil and coal.
By midday Tuesday, Republicans had filed more than 150 possible amendments. Inhofe has complained bitterly that the sweeping legislation intended to cut carbon dioxide emissions by more than half by 2050 will impose huge costs on consumers and hurt oil- and coal-producing states such as his own.
But Matthew Dempsey, spokesman for the Republican minority on the committee, said Republicans will not be maneuvering to delay or kill the legislation.
"It's a foregone conclusion it's going to pass," he said. Rather, he said, the committee meeting "will provide Senator Inhofe and committee members the opportunity to raise major concerns about the bill, including the severe economic harm this bill will place upon American families and the American economy."
