Senate Democrats are pursuing amendments on climate change as the upper chamber begins debating the fiscal 2016 budget this week in what could prove to be a showdown similar to the Keystone XL pipeline debate.
While the minority party already snagged a handful of non-binding votes on climate change when legislation authorizing the Canada-to-Texas Keystone XL pipeline came to the floor in January, they view the GOP budget that proposes reducing climate research and aid funding as another chance to cast Republicans as out of touch.
“We’re working out the details,” Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse, D-R.I., told the Washington Examiner. “I don’t even know that it has to be different. I think there’s a chasm between where the Republicans in Congress are on climate change as a result of the fossil fuel support that they depend on and where the American public is on climate change looking around at all the changes that are happening all around them. So I don’t think you need to do something new to expose that chasm.”
Democrats are seizing on the budget “vote-a-rama” slated for Thursday as an opportunity to put Republicans on record on a number of issues. Sen. Chuck Schumer of New York, the No. 3 Democrat, said last week that his caucus would focus on “eight or nine meat-and-potato middle-class issues,” but that he envisioned climate also would be part of the discussion.
Details were not clear Tuesday which climate amendments the Democrats would bring forth, Sen. Brian Schatz said. But he assured reporters that more were in the offing.
“We’re never letting up on this issue,” the Hawaii Democrat said in the Capitol.
Republicans plan to fight back with amendments of their own that aim to cast Obama administration environmental regulations and the Democrats who support them as harmful to low-income families, saying forthcoming rules would raise power prices.
One from Sen. Rob Portman, R-Ohio, would give states the right to opt out of proposed carbon emissions limits for existing power plants if their governors or legislatures find the Environmental Protection Agency rule would disproportionately harm poor families or introduce electricity reliability concerns, among other reasons. Another from Sen. Roy Blunt, R-Mo., would issue a budget point of order to block a carbon tax.
Other energy amendments would touch on the wind production tax credit, offshore oil and gas drilling, energy efficiency and liquefied natural gas exports. Some of those might come as placeholder resolutions that would ensure that future measures touching on those subjects won’t raise the deficit and can be slid into the budget at a later date.
Republicans said they aren’t worried about another Democratic push on climate change.
“I think that’s fine,” Portman told reporters. “It’s an opportunity for both sides to offer their ideas, and we’ll see plenty of that.”
Democrats have tried to use the open amendment process employed by Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., to force a number of uncomfortable votes. Climate change has been one of their top priorities, seeing the issue as a way to portray the GOP as in conflict with scientists who say humans are driving a warmer planet, largely by burning greenhouse gas-emitting fossil fuels.
“The idea that you have the dominant political party in Congress rejecting what the overwhelming majority of scientists are saying on the most important environmental issue on the planet is embarrassing, and I would hope that our Republican friends would acknowledge the climate change is real and is caused by human activity,” Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., who is the Senate Budget Committee’s top Democratic caucus member, said last week.
Fifteen Republicans voted for a non-binding amendment to the Keystone XL bill that said humans are contributing to climate change. Five of them agreed that humans “significantly” affect the climate.
But in a twist, all but one Republican, Sen. Roger Wicker, R-Miss., voted in favor of an amendment that said climate change is real. It even netted a co-sponsorship from Sen. Jim Inhofe, R-Okla., who has called global warming “the greatest hoax ever perpetrated on the American people.” He later defended his vote, saying he thought the climate has always been changing.
Democrats have rejected claims that the amendment from Whitehouse was a tactical blunder for not specifying that “human-induced” climate change is real.
“Look, I thought we made good progress the last time around. I think we had a couple of clarifying votes and we had some legislative opportunities for folks to evolve on this issue, and we’re going to be pursuing additional opportunities for members to evolve on this issue,” Schatz said.
