Beam me to Planet Gore !
Posted on 04/08/2011 9:09:27 AM PDT by Qbert
Urgent efforts to avert a government shutdown at midnight faltered yesterday over Republican initiatives to freeze climate rules, a challenge to the president's environmental priorities at the outset of his re-election bid.
[Snip]
...Although Democrats highlight just two Republican obstacles to an agreement -- riders on EPA and abortion -- those challenges can include multiple provisions.
Republicans say that all 68 amendments attached to their budget-cutting bill, H.R. 1, passed in February are in play during the deadline negotiations. The riders scissor funding from an array of programs, but the emphasis is on EPA regulations and environmental policies.
[Snip]
Nineteen of the provisions cut cash in those areas. They roll back $8.4 million that's designated for the EPA greenhouse gas registry, end new rules by the Department of Interior to locate surface mines farther from streams, block EPA efforts to increase ethanol, and defund the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, among others.
"All of the H.R. 1 riders -- all of them," Rep. Hal Rogers (R-Ky.), chairman of the Appropriations Committee, said yesterday when asked which provisions were being pursued...[Snip]
Schumer, too, said that Republicans were pushing for several EPA provisions in the compromise. "They have a whole list of riders," he said.
That might be a shrewd negotiating position, but it's far from what will ever be accepted. Senior Republican lawmakers said yesterday that they expect much less.
[Snip]
Although some GOP freshmen might view the anti-EPA measures as a critical component to the defunding bill, more experienced lawmakers believe it's more trouble than it's worth if it invites a shutdown.
"When we're trying to keep the government operating, I personally, certainly, would accept something that did not include riders on it," said Rep. Ed Whitfield (R-Ky.), chairman of the Energy and Commerce Subcommittee on Energy and Power.
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
Here we go again...
The rats want a shutdown. It did wonders for them in 1990's
The dems would be hard-pressed to find a worse issue for them to shut the government down over then the regulation of CO2.
Exactly.
I say leave the EPA riders in (all of them), and make the Dems in the Senate sweat.
(If Obama threatens to veto, then make him personally come up with massive cuts as a counter-offer.)
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