Senate Democrats are facing a stark choice on climate change and energy this year, as I reported on Monday. The House looks poised to move ahead with one piece of legislation that strengthens clean-energy standards while tackling climate change, both issues under the jurisdiction of Rep. Henry Waxman’s (D-CA) Energy and Commerce Committee.
The question facing the Senate, then, is whether they follow suit and shoot the moon with one bill, not two, on energy and climate change. Could trying to solve two problems at once help sway some of the swing votes on both issues?
One of those swing votes, Sen. Debbie Stabenow (D-MI), made her feelings known today — and she things the one-bill approach is a bad idea. Here’s how Stabenow put it to Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner during today’s Budget Committee hearing:
I very much want to see [energy and climate change be] separate, not because I’m not supporting doing something on cap-and-trade, because I am, and I have very specific ways I believe that we can — can work together to get there.
But I also believe that we can’t wait, that the — the alternative energy, clean energy investments on the front end are critical for us to be able to meet cap and trade. … I’d like to work with you in this budget putting forward a clean energy fund that would be within the context of this budget, but would not be tied to the cap-and-trade regime specifically, in case this takes a little bit longer to get done.
Stabenow’s home state is the headquarters of the beleaguered U.S. auto industry, which is likely to exert pressure on Michigan lawmakers to extract concessions during both the cap-and-trade and energy debates. That she’s not in favor of the one-bill strategy seems to be an argument in favor of scrapping it.
