Tuesday, June 8, 2010

Rockefeller May Back Murkowski and "White House eyes veto if Senate curbs EPA climate power"

This is getting interesting.
First up The Hill's E2 Wire:
Sen. Jay Rockefeller (D-W.Va.) said Monday that he “could very well” vote for Sen. Lisa Murkowski’s (R-Alaska) plan to block any Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) climate change rules even though it goes much further than his competing measure.

The Senate is slated to vote Thursday on Murkowski’s resolution, which cannot be amended or filibustered but nonetheless faces a tough road to winning 51 votes.
“It is a message about EPA,” Rockefeller told reporters in the Capitol on Monday evening. “I think it will send a message regardless of how many votes it gets.” That message, he added, “would be with respect to EPA’s closing in on coal.”>>>MORE
And from Reuters:
The White House Tuesday threatened a presidential veto if the Senate passes a measure to strip the Environmental Protection Agency of its authority to regulate greenhouse gas emissions.
Senator Lisa Murkowski, a Republican from Alaska, is leading an effort against looming EPA regulation and has 40 co-sponsors for the bill, which is set for a vote Thursday.

President Barack Obama wants the EPA to have powers to set limits on industrial emissions and other pollutants if Congress fails to enact its own legislation to fight climate change. Such a bill passed the U.S. House of Representatives a year ago but a similar effort is bogged down in the Senate.
Congressional and private-sector sources said Monday the Murkowski plan would fail unless it found new last-minute support.
White House officials have been fighting Murkowski's efforts for months. Obama is under international pressure to reduce U.S. greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, blamed for heating the earth, while the United Nations attempts to agree on a pact that would curb emissions worldwide.

"If the President is presented with this Resolution of Disapproval, which would seriously disrupt EPA's ability to address the threat of GHG pollution, as well as the multi-agency Federal GHG and fuel economy program, his senior advisors would recommend that he veto the Resolution," the White House said in a statement Tuesday.