Scott Brown puts signature "41st vote" behind Murkowski Resolution

"This has been one of the most difficult personal or professional decisions I have ever made, but it is the right one for me, because it enables me to spend more time with my husband and family,” said longtime WCVB-TV reporter Gail Huff, who will be "leaving the Boston station after nearly two decades to be a part-time reporter in Washington, D.C." the Boston Herald reported Tuesday.“

"This action would give an unelected and unaccountable government agency the power to impose restrictive and damaging carbon dioxide regulations that will drive up energy prices and hurt job-creating small businesses in our country," says our own Massachusetts junior Senator Scott Brown in a must-read Cape Cod Times op ed (h/t Red Mass Group) explaining his decision to get behind the Murkowski Resolution (S.J. Res 26) that would nullify EPA's authority to regulate greenhouse gas emissions. Businessweek has the story:

The EPA’s authority to regulate greenhouse gases under existing law stems from a 2007 Supreme Court decision on the scope of the Clean Air Act. This approach is the Obama administration’s back-up plan if the cap-and-trade legislation it prefers doesn’t pass Congress this year.

"It doesn't really matter who you elect because huge, unaccountable bureacracies are actually running things," notes a justifiably cynical Tuck, but that's exactly why the Murkowski Resolution is important. The political maneuvering is not for the faint of heart, as Businessweek explains:

Senate Republicans will try a long- shot maneuver today to derail greenhouse-gas regulations for cars, power plants, refineries and factories that the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency plans to enforce next year under existing law.

Senator Lisa Murkowski, the Alaska Republican leading the effort, said yesterday her motion to disapprove the EPA’s regulations must clear a “very high hurdle” to succeed. If the motion gets the necessary 51 votes to pass the Senate and then makes it through the U.S. House, White House officials have said President Barack Obama would likely veto the measure.

While the Murkowski disapproval motion probably won’t stop the EPA’s regulations, today’s vote threatens to set back a bigger plan to charge polluters a price for releasing carbon dioxide and other gases linked to climate change into the atmosphere, K. Whitney Stanco, a Washington-based analyst with Concept Capital, said in a telephone interview.

The closer Murkowski gets to 51 votes, the harder it gets to pass a carbon-pricing bill with the little time that’s left this year,” Stanco said.

Senator Brown was one of only three Republicans — predictably including Maine's Susan Collins and Olympia Snowe — who did not join the other 40 Republicans co-sponsoring the bill. His signature "41st vote" won't in itself be enough to pass Murkowski, but it carries profound symbolic value for those of us who gave our all to send Mr. Brown to Washington. Alerted to the forthcoming vote yesterday in an email from Americans for Prosperity, we'd put in a call to his office urging him to vote yes. Good to know our junior senator is paying attention to the folks back home:

As I continue meeting with Massachusetts residents and small business owners, they all say the same thing: "We need to get this economy moving again." For that to happen, America's businesses need the confidence to invest in new opportunities. What Bay State businesses don't need is the federal government arbitrarily passing down restrictions that would dramatically restrict their potential for growth by saddling them with higher costs.

Furthermore, imposing this regulation of emissions is something that will affect every aspect of our economy and every American. We cannot allow these decisions to be made by an unelected bureaucracy; this is an issue that deserves a full debate in Congress.

This just in as we're going to press: The Boston Herald is reporting this morning that ultra-liberal Americans United for Change is planning "to spend $40,000 on Boston broadcast and cable television stations to convince Brown to oppose the resolution. Too much, too late?

Update: Just for fun, reader brooklyn in the comments at our RWV crosspost:

If Scott Brown were to be reading the mighty SISU each day, following the insight seriously, his Job as Senator for MASS would be much easier and more successful.

Update II: Michelle Malkin "Buzzworthy" link!

Update III: Good news: All Republicans [including Collins and Snowe!] and six Democrats vote yes. Bad news: Murkowski Resolution voted down 53-47.

Crossposted at Riehl World View and Liberty Pundits.

Comments

[Gayle Miller]

brooklyn is absolutely correct. Scott Brown would have an easier job if he'd just consult with Tuck and Sissy (as well as goomp who is in himself a pure treasure)!

[Aine]

Sissy, I agree with "brooklyn." If Brown read your blog every day, he'd be one of your state's best senators ever! [g]

Thank goodness he's going to vote with Murkowski. I nearly keeled over when I read he was voting with Snowe and Collins. BTW...what is their explanation of that vote, I wonder, and how can this EPA power-grab be good for Maine?

Anyway, Sissy, thanks for all your good work for us!

[Frank Trobaugh]

If I own a restaurant, I need to pay to have my waste disposed of properly; I can't just toss it out my back door, because other people are affected. If I own a nuclear power plant, I need to pay to dispose of my waste properly, I can't just leave it in a pit, because other people are affected. But if I own a coal-fired power plant, then I can just toss my waste up a smokestack, no matter how many other people are affected.

The absence of a cap-and-trade system as we have now amounts to a subsidy for all fossil-fueled power sources. They don't have to pay for proper waste disposal, they CAN just throw their waste into the wind.

Would a cap-and-trade system raise drive up costs? Maybe. But making restaurant and grocery store owners dispose of their waste drives up the cost of a meal. Has anyone suggested that they be relieved of that cost?

The fear of "driving up costs" are over-blown, but worst, they are short-sighted. The long-term costs of the global climate crisis will be far greater than any short-term cost of removing the subsidy that fossil-fuel users currently have.

[Jeff Oakes]

Thank you Frank Trobaugh for your analogy of June 10.

We need to recognize the true cost of fossil fuel in terms of health and environmental impacts. The health care cost of asthma related illnesses alone is significant as is acid rain on aquatic ecosystems, and deforestation due to the northerly expanding range of defoliating insects.