Waxman-Markey goes to the Finance Committee

Robert Reich blogs about how so much sound and fury on capital hill can produce so little by way of helpful results.

. . . .environmental legislation is now slinking its way through Congress. The Waxman-Markey climate bill was passed by the House in June; John Kerry and Barbara Boxer have now released a Senate version. All four legislators claim to be progressives concerned about the environment, but the bills are, frankly, far short of what’s needed. Waxman-Markey gives away 85 percent of pollution permits to the nation’s biggest polluters, and the “cap” it proposes on overall carbon emissions would cut greenhouse gas emissions only by an estimated 2 to 4 percent by 2020 compared to the UN reference year of 1990. (If America was to play its appropriate role in a global climate deal, the reduction would be more like 40 percent, and the U.S. would also provide financing and technology so developing countries could reduce their emissions by a comparable amount.) The Kerry-Boxer bill has a stronger cap on emissions but it’s still far short of what’s necessary — and it leaves out the hardest part, which is the actual cap-and-trade mechanism. Kerry and Boxer are leaving that to the Senate Finance Committee, of all places.

The Finance Committee is dominated by "blue dogs" -- senators from small states who mainly represent the large corporations that fund their campaigns.  Meanwhile, the US demonstrates global leadership at the Bangkok Climate Change Talks (just kidding, of course).