Energy & Environment

The President and CEO of the National Black Chamber of Commerce (NBCC) tore into Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) Thursday for what he said were "condescending" and "God awful" racial statements at a hearing.

NBCC head Harry C. Alford took strong exception to Boxer having referenced an NAACP report favoring climate change legislation during a hearing of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, of which Boxer is the chairwoman.

"Madam chair, that is condescending to me," Alford said. "I'm the National Black Chamber of Commerce, and you're trying to put up some other black group to pit against me."

Boxer defended including the report, however, saying the report reflects a "diversity" of support behind climate change legislation facing the Senate.

"If this gentleman were here, he would be proud he's being quoted," Boxer said in defense of the NAACP support.

Alford, however, struck back against Boxer, accusing her of "getting racial" in the climate change debate.

"All that's condescending, and I don't like it. It's racial. I take offense to it. As an African-American and a veteran of this country, I take offense to that," he said. "You're quoting some other black man -- why don't you quote some other Asian or some other... You're getting racial here."

"You're speaking on behalf of the black community?" Alford asked. "Why are you doing the colored people association's study with the black Chamber of Commerce?"

He finally concluded:

"We've been looking at energy policy since 1996. And we are referring to the experts, regardless of their color. And for someone to tell me, an African-American, college-education veteran of the United States Army, that I must contend with some other "black group" and put aside everything else in here -- This has NOTHING to do with the NAACP, and really has nothing to do with the National Black Chamber of Commerce. We're talking about energy. And that -- that road the chair went down, I think is God awful."

You can view the exchange -- starting at about 18:00 minutes into the video -- here.

34 Nobel Laureates from the United States are calling on President Obama to press Congress to tack on an additional $150 billion in spending on top of the controversial climate change legislation facing lawmakers.

The Laureates are pressing the president to include his proposed Clean Energy Technology Fund as part of a broader effort to address global warming.

The Laureates urged lawmakers to include an extra $150 billion in funding -- $15 billion over the next ten years --to fund research and development and technology implementation they asserted were key to curbing climate change.

"The stable support this Fund would provide is essential to pay for the research and development needed if the U.S., as well as the developing world, are to achieve their goals in reducing greenhouse gases at an affordable cost," the group wrote Obama.

The House passed the American Clean Energy and Security act in a close vote last month, and the Senate won't take up the legislation until after recess.

The Laureates needled the House bill for not providing "stable, specific funding for sustained research in the Department of Energy's (DOE) Office of Science, or for the energy research and associated technology development programs of DOE (at the Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy, Electricity Deliverability, Fossil, and Nuclear offices)."

Calling her Tuesday op-ed on energy issues a "marvel of misinformation," MoveOn.org both went after Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin (R) and sought to use her to raise money on Wednesday.

Palin penned an op-ed in the Washington Post on Wednesday that thoroughly criticized President Obama's energy policy.

On Wednesday, MoveOn, liberal political activism group, sent an email to its supporters slamming Palin.

"Well, now we know why Sarah Palin is quitting as governor of Alaska," the email says. "Her op-ed is a marvel of misinformation and outright lies. Just like conservatives in Congress, Palin is trotting out the 'energy taxes' scare tactic, and arguing instead for more drilling and more dirty coal. This bill already has too many giveaways to Big Coal and Big Oil, but it's still not enough for Palin."

Naturally, MoveOn then asks supporters for money to help run an ad in response to Palin's op-ed.

It is worth noting that Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.), who has written a book on energy issues, also went after Palin for her op-ed on Tuesday. On the Huffington Post, Kerry said Palin's op-ed "focuses on everything but the single grave challenge that forms the basis of all of our actions: the crisis of global climate change."

Check out MoveOn's full email after the jump.

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Former Vice President Al Gore is pushing lawmakers to pass climate change legislation with a "religious" fervor, Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) said Monday.

Grassley, who had previously expressed skepticism that climate change bill similar to that passed by the House late last month, stopped short of saying the legislation was dead in the Senate, thanks to efforts by Gore and other Democratic leaders.

"I didn't say it's dead," Grassley said during an interview on CNBC. "Because when you've Democrats that are leading this Congress, and Gore pushing them in the religious way he's pushing them, they're going to want to produce something."

Gore had worked the phones heavily before the House vote on the Waxman-Markey climate change legislation, which, among other things, would establish a cap on carbon emissions, with a tradable market in pollution offset permits.

"If it had trouble getting 219 votes in the House, it's going to have really big trouble getting 60 votes in the Senate at this point," Grassley added.

The Iowa Republican, the ranking member of the Senate Finance Committee, said that Sen. Barbara Boxer's (D-Calif.) decision to delay action on the bill until after the August recess "tells you that there's some real trouble in the United States Senate on the global warming issue."

On healthcare, Grassley downplayed notions that not having a piece of reform legislation through the Congress by the end of 2009 would be a "setback" to President Obama's agenda. Grassley did say, though, that if the debate bleeds over into 2010, it could hurt Obama politically.

"I think that it will get out of the committee before the August recess," Grassley said. "But I don't see how, with the Sotomayor nomination coming before the Senate before we adjourn on August the 8th, that there will be time to get a bill through the Senate."

"I think he's expecting to sign a bill sometime this fall, and I think that could still be done," he added.

The success of Congress and the Obama administration this next election cycle hinges on its ability to pass climate change legislation, one of the House's lead proponents of such legislation said Friday.

"Failure is really not an option on health care," Rep. Henry Waxman (D-Calif.) said during an appearance on MSNBC. "This is a make-or-break issue for President Obama and the Democrats in the Congress."

Waxman, the chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, said he "couldn't imagine" Democrats having to campaign back in their districts without having achieved passage.

"I can't imagine some of the Democrats in difficult districts going home and running for reelection in 2010 and saying, 'Well, I don't have a health care bill,'" Waxman said.

The bill passed through the House by a narrow margin, but is still a way's off from being completed in the Senate, where it may be watered down to draw in centrist Democrats.

"Now, they're saying, well, maybe they did it they can get it out of the House, but how could they possibly do it in the Senate," Waxman said of the bill's prospects in the Senate. "Do you think senators cared less about our national security or global warming or trying to create jobs for our people?"

The Senate may not bring major climate legislation up for a vote this year, Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) said today.

The House passed the controversial legislation by a slim margin a few weeks ago, but Grassley says Majority Leader Harry Reid has been downplaying the chances of Senate passage.

"He didn't really say it wasn't coming up this year, but when I look at the rest of July until August 8th and then everything after Labor Day, including Thanksgiving and then Christmas, we only have about 15 to 17 weeks left this year," Grassley told Radio Iowa.

The Iowa Republican is the ranking member of the Senate Finance Committee, which has jurisdiction over some elements of the climate legislation that would raise revenue or affect the tax code.

But the Finance Committee is busy trying to pound out a healthcare compromise, the White House's top priority.

"[W]ith health care reform, all of the appropriation bills and probably some banking regulatory reform, I don't know that there would be time for it to come up even if we didn't do some of those things," Grassley said.

Republicans are able to stop any climate change bill resembling the one passed by the House on the Senate floor, Sen. David Vitter (R-La.) declared Thursday.

"I'm predicting -- at least as we speak now -- that we can kill any major climate change legislation on the Senate floor, and prevent this massive utility and energy tax on every American from going into effect," Vitter said during an interview with a conservative news program.

Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) announced earlier today that the Senate wouldn't take up their version of the House cap-and-trade climate bill until after the August recess in Congress. Republicans have accused her of stalling out of concern for a lack or support for the bill.

"I'm very hopeful we'll be able to block any major climate change bill like that which came out of the House on the Senate floor," Vitter said. "I think we'll block it on the Senate floor if the American people really tune in and get the message."

The conservative Louisiana lawmaker said he has "real doubts" about the "so-called 'science'" behind climate change, but charged that the House bill, which would establish a market for carbon permits.

The House version of the bill squeaked by with significant Democratic defections, and some centrist Republicans crossing the aisle to join majority Democrats.

The Senate pushed back consideration of a sweeping climate change bill until after the August recess in Congress.

Senate Environment and Public Works Committee Chairwoman Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) announced that she'd pushed back her self-imposed deadline to pass cap-and-trade legislation that squeaked through the House in late June.

Boxer said senators would take up the legislation "as soon as we get back" from the August recess, according to Reuters. She said she's "not a bit" worried the Senate will be able to complete and vote on a bill this year, however.

Boxer also acknowledged that the intense focus in the Senate on healthcare has detracted from her ability to craft a climate change bill to complement the House bill.

"A lot of our colleagues are on the health committee," she said. "It's been difficult."

Sen. Jim Inhofe (R-Okla.), the ranking Republican on the committee and a noted global warming skeptic, suggested that it was political opposition, not timing, that spurred the delay.

"There is no question that the American public flatly rejected the House ramming through legislation that would have devastating impacts on American consumers," Inhofe said in a statement. "So with this delay, the public should expect more arm-twisting and backroom deals -- or, in other words, more business as usual in Washington."

The climate change bill that passed through the House will find an uphill battle in the Senate, Sen. Jim Bunning (R-Ky.) warned Wednesday.

Bunning, a member of the Committee on Energy and Natural Resources and ranking member of the Finance Subcommittee on Energy, Natural Resources, and Infrastructure, said the Democratic votes weren't there to pass Waxman-Markey through the Senate.

"Yes," Bunning said in his weekly conference with Kentucky reporters when asked if the Republicans would be able to stop the climate change bill that narrowly passed the House. "Because there are a lot of Democratic senators that are not for cap and trade as it was proposed in the House of Representatives."

"That bill was jammed down the House of Representatives' throats," he said. "So you know it isn't a good bill for the overall economies for most of the states."

44 Democrats defected from leadership on the House vote, but the Senate version of the bill is only in its preliminary legislative stages, and might make concessions to Midwestern and rural centrist Democrats in order to win enough votes to overcome a filibuster.

Senate Republicans, too, have made a point out of predicting with some frequency, too, that climate change and healthcare reform -- Democrats' two top initiatives -- won't make it out of Congress by the self-imposed deadlines.

Listen to the full conference here.

The Washington Post takes a look today at the White House's efforts to maintain unity in a diverse Democratic caucus.

This anecdote on Obama's lobbying efforts for Waxman-Markey stood out:

When Obama entered the fray on May 5, summoning all 36 committee Democrats to the White House, he didn't make a single demand. Rather, participants say, he pointed to a portrait of Abraham Lincoln and said, "He had a chance to affect history. You, too, have a chance to affect history."

As a junior Democratic lawmaker, it'd be pretty hard to refuse Obama after that.

The more systematic effort, however, is outreach to politically vulnerable first- and second-term Democrats. The White House is making every effort to extend the perks of the executive branch to keeping those members happy.

Rep. Jason Altmire, elected in 2006, was invited to a breakfast in March with Veterans Affairs Secretary Eric K. Shinseki to discuss issues related to the large population of veterans in Altmire's western Pennsylvania district. Altmire's office and the VA now communicate regularly. Maffei was given a leading role in pressing two popular bills, to curb credit card practices deemed harmful to consumers and to protect auto dealers.

Rep. Ed Perlmutter (D-Colo.), a member of the class of '06, said he has had extensive discussions with top administration officials on financial regulatory reform, another Obama priority. When he expressed to a White House official his interest in talking with Housing Secretary Shaun Donovan about a piece of legislation, he got a call the next day setting the meeting for three days later. He has met with three other Cabinet officials to discuss bills.

But it doesn't always work. "I'm a firm no," told Rahm Emanuel just before the Waxman-Markey vote. "I wouldn't waste any more time talking to me."