A Commentary By Howard Rich
Rasmussen Reports
3/10/2010
With the “science” of global warming collapsing like a house of cards, the Copenhagen “climate change” conference accomplishing absolutely nothing and a massive energy tax hike going nowhere in the U.S. Senate, President Barack Obama is now faced with a conundrum. He can either read the handwriting on the wall, or seek to accomplish through regulation what he couldn’t accomplish through legislation: the handover of U.S. environmental policy to radical environmentalists.
Does any of this sound familiar?
This is frankly the same dynamic we are witnessing in the health care debate. There, Obama says he will use procedural loopholes to ram his version of a socialized medicine proposal through the U.S. Congress against the expressed will of the American people.
Once again, it appears that Obama simply cannot comprehend the meaning of a word understood by literally millions of toddlers: “No.”
As he seeks to push his health care proposals on the one hand, Obama will no doubt attempt to frame the debate along partisan lines. On the energy front, it won’t be so easy.
That’s because West Virginia Senator John D. Rockefeller – who is among the President’s staunchest allies in the U.S. Senate – is standing up to Obama and the radical environmentalists’ power grab. Rockefeller has recently introduced legislation that would place a two-year moratorium on the EPA’s ability to regulate greenhouse gases from power plants and other stationary emitters, which is precisely the regulatory authority Obama is threatening to use if Congress doesn’t pass his “cap and trade” bill this year.
In unveiling his legislation, Rockefeller noted that his primary objective was to “safeguard jobs,” but he bluntly reminded Obama that it was “Congress, not the EPA” which bears responsibility for setting the nation’s energy policy.
The article continues at Rasmussen Reports.
