It started last week, when an influential group of Senate Democrats began signaling to the Obama administration that its $3.55 trillion 2010 budget bites off more than they’d like to be chewing.
The centrist Dems threw up plenty of red flags, from Obama’s decision to let the Bush tax cuts expire for the wealthiest Americans in 2011 to the inclusion of climate change in the budget as an $80 billion-plus revenue raiser. And the most powerful member of this group is Senate Budget Committee Chairman Kent Conrad (D-ND), who quipped to The Hill yesterday that anyone who thinks the votes are there for Obama’s budget is “smoking something.”
That Conrad is joining the cadre of centrists putting the brakes on the White House budget isn’t surprising — he was also a skeptic of the stimulus — but it is disheartening for anyone hoping for action on carbon emissions this year.
Conrad and his committee’s ranking Republican, lapsed Commerce Secretary-designate Judd Gregg (NH), are singing from the same hymnal in criticizing carbon emissions regulations as too costly in the bad economy, handing the GOP a major cudgel to hit the forthcoming cap-and-trade climate bill when it emerges later on this year.
