Senate Turns Back Measures Seeking to Limit E.P.A.’s Efforts on Global Warming
By JOHN M. BRODER
Published: April 6, 2011
WASHINGTON — The Senate on Wednesday rejected efforts to block the Environmental Protection Agency’s program to regulate greenhouse gases, defeating four measures that would have limited the agency’s attempts to address global warming.
Philip Scott Andrews/The New York Times
Senator Mitch McConnell, Republican of Kentucky, was a co-sponsor of a bill seeking to repeal the E.P.A.'s finding on the health and environmental dangers of heat-trapping gases.
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The Senate voted as the House wasdebating a measure that would also halt the regulations by repealing the agency’s scientific finding that carbon dioxide and other heat-trapping gases are endangering human health and the environment. That bill is expected to pass the House on Thursday. President Obama hasvowed to veto any such measure if it should reach his desk.
In the Senate, a virtually identical bill sponsored by Senators Mitch McConnell of Kentucky and James M. Inhofe of Oklahoma, both Republicans, was attached to an unrelated small-business bill. The measure drew 50 votes, including 4 from Democrats, but fell shy of the 60 needed to avert a filibuster.
Democratic alternatives that would impose less extreme limits on the E.P.A. regulation drew as many as 12 votes, putting the White House on notice that it risks further Democratic defections unless it moderates the scale and pace of its proposed carbon rules.
Mr. Obama has consistently opposed any effort that hinders the administration’s efforts to restrict emissions that scientists say are warming the atmosphere and leading to unpredictable and potentially devastating changes in the global climate.
The White House welcomed the Senate votes in a statement, saying, “The administration is encouraged by the Senate’s actions today to defend the Environmental Protection Agency’s ability to protect public health under the Clean Air Act.”
The statement continued: “By rejecting efforts to roll back E.P.A.’s common-sense steps to safeguard Americans from harmful pollution, the Senate also rejected an approach that would have increased the nation’s dependence on oil, contradicted the scientific consensus on global warming, and jeopardized America’s ability to lead the world in the clean energy economy. The Clean Air Act is a vital tool in protecting our families — particularly children — from a wide variety of harmful pollutants that cause asthma and lung disease, and the administration remains committed to protecting this important law.”
Congress thus remains deadlocked on the E.P.A.’s authority to regulate carbon dioxide as a pollutant. But efforts to handcuff the environmental agency are not likely to end here. Republican leaders are pushing to attach similar measures to the budget bill that is now being negotiated by administration and Congressional officials. If that fails, they can be expected to try again on debt ceiling or fiscal year 2012 budget bills.
Mr. McConnell said that the 50 votes for his bill and the Democratic votes for the less draconian alternatives demonstrated a bipartisan majority in favor of thwarting the E.P.A.’s plans to regulate greenhouse gases.
“Altogether, more than 60 senators voted in favor of four amendments that, to one degree or another, would restrain the E.P.A.’s power to regulate carbon emissions from farmers, manufacturers and power plants,” Mr. McConnell said after the vote. “We in the Senate will continue to fight for legislation that will give the certainty that no unelected bureaucrat at the E.P.A. is going to make efforts to create jobs even more difficult than the administration already has.”
Wednesday’s votes came less than two years after the House passed the most ambitiousclimate change and energy bill ever considered in Congress, a measure that would have created a nationwide trading system to curb carbon emissions. That bill died in the Senate, and opposition to cap and trade became a successful 2010 political platform point for Tea Party groups and their financers in fossil fuel industries. Nearly all Republicans elected in the midterm election expressed doubt about the science of global warming and opposed regulation of climate-altering gases.
The E.P.A. has begun a program of regulating carbon dioxide emissions that will unfold over the next several years, beginning with the largest stationary emitters like power plants, factories and oil refineries.
The agency is already regulating greenhouse gas emissions from cars and light trucks to be sold over the next five years under an agreement negotiated with states and automakers. The House bill would allow that program to proceed but bars any future regulations on greenhouse gas emissions from vehicles.
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