GOP senator: Murkowski lacks votes for plan to block EPA climate rules

A GOP senator who is backing Sen. Lisa Murkowski’s (R-Alaska) plan to block EPA greenhouse gas rules predicted the measure will be defeated on the Senate floor Thursday.

Sen. Jim Risch (R-Idaho) said it lacks votes even as he spoke in favor of the plan, which is slated for a vote Thursday afternoon.

“At the end of the day, we all know how this is going to come out. There is going to be 55 votes, give or take a couple, to defeat Senator Murkowski’s resolution, and it is going to be on a generally party-line basis. And at the end, the administration will claim a great and glorious victory again,” he said on the Senate floor.

“But it won’t be a great and glorious victory for the American people. It will be a defeat for the American people,” Risch added.

The first-term senator said EPA climate rules represent a power grab by the administration at the expense of Congress.

“This is a major policy decision that will affect every single American. It has profound effects on the economy. It has profound effects on the movement of jobs overseas, and these are things that should be debated, and they are things that should be decided by elected persons, not by the people at the EPA who are not elected and not answerable to the electorate,” he said.