Dems on Senate spending panel want separate EPA rules vote

Sen. Jay Rockefeller (D-W.Va.) on Tuesday said Democrats on the Senate Appropriations Committee who have supported his effort to delay EPA climate regulations will not do so on the panel.

Three Democrats on the committee — Ben Nelson (Neb.), Tim Johnson (S.D.) and Byron Dorgan (N.D.) — have co-sponsored Rockefeller’s effort to delay EPA climate-change regulations for two years in order to give Congress more time to deal with the issue.
 
But Rockefeller on Tuesday said that “several people on that committee who are sponsors of that bill have told me that they can’t support it in that committee.”
 

Two other Democrats who voted for a resolution by Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) in June that  disapproved of EPA regulating industrial greenhouse gas emissions – Mary Landrieu (La.) and Mark Pryor (Ark.) — also sit on the panel.
 
Landrieu on Tuesday said she is considering voting for a rider to an EPA spending bill the panel is scheduled to take up Thursday that would stop EPA climate regulations next year.
 

But Rockefeller – who prior to the summer recess had said the appropriations debate might be the best chance to delay EPA regulations — at least seems convinced now that any movement in his effort is going to have to occur outside of it.
 
“First of all, nobody around here is thinking there’s going to be any appropriations bill passed on the floor at all, regardless of what happens in committee,” he said. 
 
So where does that leave his effort?

“It leaves it no worse off,” he said. “No worse off is better off.”
 
Republicans at Thursday’s committee markup of the EPA spending bill have been expected to offer an amendment that would block the agency next year from spending funds on regulations of greenhouse gas emissions from power plants and other large industrial sources. Those regulations are set to begin in January.
 
There appears to be enough votes on the panel to approve such an amendment if all of the panel Democrats who have previously backed such efforts to delay EPA regulations voted in its favor. This would be at least a symbolic rebuke of the Obama administration’s effort before the November election.
 
But Dorgan, for one, said the appropriate place to debate the issue is on the Senate floor, perhaps separate from the spending debate.
 
“I believe we’re going to have a vote on the Rockefeller bill on the floor of the Senate, and that’s where we should have that vote,” he said Tuesday.

Other Democrats on the panel might also use that rationale as a reason to vote against a Republican amendment.

Incorrect information initially appeared in this post. It was updated at 6:44 p.m.

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