This PPI series will guide you through the main issues that are likely to arise in the coming weeks as the Senate takes on climate change. Some of the issues that come up will be essential to a good climate bill. Others might get a lot of play but are in fact trivial for climate policy. The “cheat sheets” below will help you make sense of the climate bill that eventually emerges from Congress:
Even before the president’s announcement of Elena Kagan as his second nominee for the Supreme Court, progressives were beginning to rethink their position of skepticism (often assumed in the cause of encouraging a different nominee, typically Judge Diane Wood), and conservatives were beginning to gird up their loins for a confirmation fight.
There will be some progressives (probably Glenn Greenwald, but perhaps others) who may never reconcile themselves to support for a Justice with Kagan’s record as Solicitor General on civil liberties issues related to executive power and treatment of terrorism suspects.
But as SCOTUSblog’s Tom Goldstein suggested at The New Republic this weekend, the confirmation debate in the Senate is very likely to fall into familiar partisan/ideological patterns, with the final vote representing a mirror image of the Alito confirmation.
One major argument for her nomination all along has been her recent confirmation as solicitor general with significant Republican support. But some GOP senators will quickly argue that a different standard altogether will be used for a lifetime appointment to the High Court, and find reasons to vote against her (one senator, Arlen Specter, is in a particularly embarrassing situation, having voted against Kagan for solicitor general back when he was struggling to placate conservatives; he must now support her for the Court in the midst of a tough Democratic primary battle).
A summary of immediate conservative reaction to Kagan’s nomination by CBS’ Jan Crawford indicates that her enforcement of Harvard Law School’s ban on military recruitment on campus on grounds that DADT violated the university’s non-discrimination policies will be the lightning rod for the campaign against her. That makes sense, because the issue simultaneously strikes chords with cultural conservatives spoiling for a Court fight, and with conservative “populists” generally who will depict Kagan as an New York/Ivy League elitist out of touch with mainstream patriotical values.
But as I’ve argued earlier, the real question is whether the newly radicalized conservative/Tea Party faction of the GOP will insist on making the confirmation fight a showcase for their own distinctive views on the Constitution, which would make any Obama nominee, and most Republican nominees, categorically unacceptable. Kagan’s notoriously short public record of pronouncements on constitutional issues may, in fact, feed conspiracy theories that she represents a carefully planned leftist plot to move the Court in a totalitarian direction.
So even as Republicans search (almost certainly in vain, given the scrutiny she’s already received as a likely Court nominee) for some smoking gun in Kagan’s background, keep an eye on the tone of conservative rhetoric about this nomination. If it gets as shrill as I suspect it will, then progressives need to be prepared for a counter-offensive that exposes the radicalism of the increasingly dominant faction of the GOP.
It wasn’t a big shock, but still, citizens of the United Kingdom woke up today to a very unsettled political situation, having rebuffed Labour and the Liberal Democrats in yesterday’s election, but without giving the Tories the majority necessary to immediately govern.
With votes still out from two seats, the Conservatives have 305 seats, Labour has 258, the Lib Dems 57, and other parties 28. The popular vote split 36 percent Tory, 29 percent Labour, and 23 percent Lib Dem. The major surprise was that the “Cleggmania” that seemed to grip the electorate during the campaign did not translate into a much better showing for the Lib Dems, who actually lost seats. But they certainly retained some influence as the party holding the balance of power, and today Nick Clegg is entertaining semi-public overtures from both the big parties to form a coalition government, while hoping to secure some sort of agreement to move the electoral system away from the first-past-the-post method that has so long frustrated the Lib Dems (most notably yesterday).
The most likely outcome is a minority Tory government under David Cameron with a short-term mandate to deal with the country’s immediate economic and financial problems and then hold another election, possibly even this year. Given the brevity of British campaigns, that’s not quite the nightmare scenario it sounds like to American ears.
When you read as much stuff on politics as I do, there’s an odd sort of exultation when you spot something so very poorly reasoned that you can spend many pleasurable hours tearing it apart. It helps when the author of such a “pinata” (i.e., it can be hit from just about any direction) is arrogantly or angrily wrong, stamping his or her feet at the very necessity of having to explain obvious truths that are anything but obvious or true. That’s why, on doctor’s orders, I only allow myself to read Peggy Noonan’s columns, so predictably full of rich manure, now and then.
Today the famous pollster and sometimes-Democratic, sometimes-strategist, Mark Penn, has published an op-ed in the Washington Post that is Noonan-esque in its strongly held folly. You can read the whole thing, but basically, Penn is saying that the vast uptick in independent voter sentiment in this country is creating a good environment for a centrist third party that’s socially liberal and economically conservative, and Penn points to the rise of the UK’s Liberal Democrats as an example of what could happen here.
As Jon Chait notes in his own demolition of Penn’s column, the first contention is demonstrably wrong, though it appears it will take wooden stakes to kill it:
In fact, pollsters and public opinion experts — a group that apparently excludes Penn — understand that independent self-identification largely reflects a desire not to be seen as a closed-minded, automatic vote. It does not, however, reflect actual voting independence. Most self-identified independents are at least as partisan in their voting behavior as self-identified Democrats or Republicans. It’s largely a class phenomenon, with wealthier and more educated voters being more likely to call themselves independent, but not more likely to go astray in the voting both. The rise of independent self-identification has little to do with voters moving toward the center or the parties moving toward the extremes. Plenty of those self-identified Democrats in the 1950s voted for Ike.
In other words, actual as opposed to professed independent political behavior — i.e., ticket-splitting — has regularly declined now for decades, as has the percentage of the electorate made up of “true” independents. So there is no ripe uncaptured constituency out there, and to the extent that it even exists, it’s ideologically polyglot, not a “centrist” coalition ready for the taking. Many self-professed “independents,” as we’ve seen once again in the Tea Party Movement and in elements of the Left disgruntled with Obama and before him with Bill Clinton, are more ideological than self-professed partisans. Maybe they’ll vote, and maybe they won’t, but they are not combinable in some sort of third-party impulse.
More importantly, as Penn does acknowledge, there are powerful institutional barriers to the rise of third parties. But in noting the failure of the last two major efforts (John Anderson’s in 1980, and Ross Perot’s in 1992 and 1996), Penn simply says they failed because neither leader was “dynamic” enough. Perhaps, as some observers will undoubtedly conclude, Penn’s column is really a public valentine to some very rich person (e.g., Michael Bloomberg) who might look in the mirror and see the leader “dynamic” enough to succeed where so many others, including reasonably dynamic people like Teddy Roosevelt, have failed. But in any event, Penn’s case for the viability of a third party totally depends on his analysis of the “centrist” and “independent” electorate, which is bogus to begin with.
Perhaps sensing the weakness of his case, Penn then hauls in the Liberal Democrats in an effort to divine some sort of transatlantic movement. You wouldn’t know if from his account, but far from being a “new” phenomenon, the LibDems represent a centuries-old political tradition (technically, the party represents a merger of the ancient Liberals with the Social Democrats, a splinter party that left Labour for many of the same reasons that Tony Blair and his associates found for reforming it a few years later). And it’s not exactly easy to match the Lib Dems to Penn’s template of “socially liberal and fiscally conservative” voters. Aside from “change,” they are for tax increases to reduce public debt, legalized same-sex marriages, major reductions in defense spending, liberalized immigration laws and more aggressive participation in Europe. Their opposition to British entry in the Iraq War is probably the recent position with which they were most identified. Does this agenda sound “nonpartisan centrist” in any context that is transferable to America, or to Penn’s own agenda? Or more like the left wing of the Democratic Party, which Penn despises?
Moreover, “Cleggmania” aside, it’s very unlikely that the LibDems will make gains in their parliamentary representation that are in any way comparable to the share of the popular vote they receive today. And that’s in a country where the barriers to third parties are considerably lower than in the U.S.
I am not, as it happens, among the vast ranks of Penn-haters in the progressive blogosphere. I gave his last book one of its more favorable reviews. But the reality is that Mark Penn is largely frozen out of today’s Democratic Party elites thanks to years of intra-party combat and particularly his abrasive role in Hillary Clinton’s 2008 presidential campaign. Yes, he’s very wealthy and still has the juice, it appears, to command the op-ed pages of the Washington Post when he feels like it. The third party he describes as just over the horizon, however, is pretty much a party of one.
Results from yesterday’s primaries in Indiana, North Carolina and Ohio showed that on occasion the conventional wisdom is right.
Dan Coats did indeed win a Senate nomination in Indiana with an unimpressive (39 percent) percentage because the hard-core conservative vote was divided between Sen. Jim DeMint’s (R-S.C.) favorite, Marlin Stutzman (who finished second), and paleoconservative John Hostettler.
Lee Fisher did indeed parlay superior money, name recognition and endorsements into a fairly comfortable (56/44) win over Jennifer Brunner in Ohio’s Democratic Senate primary.
And in the North Carolina Democratic Senate primary, Elaine Marshall and Cal Cunningham are indeed headed for a runoff on June 22, with Marshall leading the first round a few percentage points short of the 40 percent threshold for outright victory. As expected, Ken Lewis ran third, though with a relatively strong 17 percent.
A PPP survey over the weekend showed Marshall leading a hypothetical runoff contest 43/32 with a quarter of the vote undecided. I guess we will see just how much money Cunningham’s friends in the DSCC are willing and able to raise to help him overcome that lead.
In House races, the closest thing to a real upset was in Indiana, where endangered incumbent Republican congressmen Mark Souder and Dan Burton narrowly survived. This disappointed journalists who had prepared “anti-incumbent mood” pieces in advance.
Rep. Larry Kissell (D-N.C.) won his primary pretty easily in North Carolina, and self-funded conservative Tim D’Annuzio will be in a runoff in his effort to take on Kissell.
Next up on the calendar is Utah’s Republican State Convention on Saturday, which will determine the fate of endangered Sen. Bob Bennett, who may have fatally displeased conservatives by co-sponsoring bipartisan health reform legislation. One of Bennett’s chief tormenters, Red State’s Erick Erickson, is already moving on to an effort to demonize the guy who appears to be running second ahead of Bennett in delegates, so it must not look good for the incumbent.
Fifty-three hours — that is how long it took our law enforcement agencies to apprehend Faisal Shahzad, the main suspect in Saturday’s attempted Times Square bombing. The only thing faster has been Republican efforts to once again politicize a failed attack. Just like they did after the apprehension of the failed Christmas Day bomber, Republican leaders wasted no time yesterday trying to spin up mass hysteria by reminding us that we need to be living in a heightened state of perpetual fear, that Constitutional rights are meaningless, and that, oh yes, this is all Democrats’ fault.
Take Rep. Eric Cantor (R-VA). At a speech he gave yesterday at the Heritage Foundation, the House minority whip made it abundantly clear that he believes the entire country should be living in a permanent state of nationwide panic:
[Yet] with each close encounter, my fear is that the country goes on heightened alert only as long as the media tend to cover it. All too often that means hours and days rather than permanently.
Does he not realize there are hundreds of thousands of American service members at war right now and have been for going on nine years? Cantor went on to say:
Many of the same critics who groused about how we failed to connect the dots prior to 9-11 are today repeating the same pattern. As a result, America is at risk of slipping into the type of false sense of security which prevailed before that September morning.
Rudy Giuliani could not have said it better — noun, verb, 9-11.
Equally disappointing was the predictable line of attack dragged out by Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) and Rep. Peter King (R-NY). The two pounced on the administration and the Department of Justice for reading Shahzad his Miranda rights after he was taken into custody — even though the suspect was interrogated (and apparently sang like a bird) before those rights were read. McCain said it would be a “serious mistake” to read the suspect his Miranda rights, while King was quoted as saying, “I know he’s an American citizen, but still.”
Republicans are blatantly suggesting that we ignore what our Constitution requires and our Supreme Court has mandated. They proudly embrace the argument that this suspected criminal — who is, whether you like it or not, an American citizen accused of committing crimes on American soil — has no protection under American laws. This is a very slippery slope.
Even Glenn Beck (yes, Glenn Beck!) disagrees with this, stating yesterday that this is no time to “shred the Constitution.”
This “strategy” of fear-mongering coupled with the casual application of due process and the rule of law is pathetic, predictable and dangerous. Republicans continue to insist that every act or attempted act of terrorism on American soil must be met with a militarized response straight from an episode of “24.” They ignore, at our peril, the long and successful track record our criminal justice system has in convicting these terrorists.
I fundamentally believe that there is only one way the terrorists “win,” and that is when we ourselves destroy the very ideals that are the foundation upon which our nation stands. Republicans seem to have no issue tearing down those pillars by themselves.
Like observers from all over the partisan and ideological spectrum, I’ve been following the fallout from Arizona’s new immigration law (compounded by conflicting reports that the Obama administration and/or congressional Democratic leaders might be moving up federal immigration legislation in the queue) very closely, given the implications this issue has for both 2010 and (particularly) beyond.
But in his weekly column for National Journal over the weekend, Ron Brownstein has done us all the great service of carefully documenting how far and how fast Republican members of Congress have moved on this subject since the Senate passed a comprehensive immigration reform bill in 2006:
Just four years ago, 62 U.S. senators, including 23 Republicans, voted for a comprehensive immigration reform bill that included a pathway to citizenship for illegal aliens. That bill was co-authored by Arizona Republican John McCain and Massachusetts Democrat Edward Kennedy. President Bush strongly supported it. The Republican supporters also included such conservative senators as Sam Brownback of Kansas and Mitch McConnell of Kentucky….The measure almost certainly could have attracted the necessary 218 votes to pass the House. But it died when House GOP leaders refused to bring it to a vote because they concluded that it lacked majority support among House Republicans.
Since 2006, Republican support for comprehensive action has unraveled. In 2007, Senate negotiators tilted the bill further to the right on issues such as border enforcement and guest workers. And yet, amid a rebellion from grassroots conservatives against anything approaching “amnesty,” just 12 Senate Republicans supported the measure as it fell victim to a filibuster. By 2008, McCain declared in a GOP presidential debate that he would no longer support his own bill: Tougher border enforcement, he insisted, should precede discussion of any new pathway to citizenship.
So the GOP position was moving rightwards at warp speed even with a supporter of comprehensive immigration reform, George W. Bush, still in the White House, being advised by Karl Rove, who viewed such legislation as critical to maintaining a competitive position for Republicans among Hispanic voters. But it’s shifted even more since then, even though levels of immigration have significantly dropped.
For months, Sens. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., and Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., have been negotiating an enforcement-legalization plan that largely tracks the 2006 model with some innovative updates, including a “biometric” Social Security card to certify legal status for employment. On balance, their proposal appears more conservative than the 2006 bill.Yet it has been stalled for weeks because Graham had demanded that a second Republican sign on as a co-sponsor before the legislation is released, and none stepped forward. Even Graham angrily backed away this week, after Senate Democratic leaders briefly suggested they would move immigration reform ahead of climate-change legislation he is also negotiating. Reform advocates suspect that Graham is withdrawing from the immigration effort partly to avoid embarrassing his close ally McCain, who faces a stiff primary challenge from conservative former Rep. J.D. Hayworth.
So it appears that Senate Republican support for comprehensive immigration reform (or to be exact, a more conservative version of it) has dropped from 23 to 1 and perhaps soon to nada.
Underneath this shift, notes Brownstein, is the self-replicating demographic isolation of the GOP, which, as Rove forsaw, could make the construction of a Republican majority much harder in the medium-to-long-range future:
[T]he hardening GOP position also shows how the party is being tugged toward nativism as its coalition grows more monochromatic: In a nation that is more than one-third minority, nearly 90 percent of McCain’s votes in the 2008 presidential election came from whites. That exclusionary posture could expose the GOP to long-term political danger. Although Hispanics are now one-sixth of the U.S. population, they constitute one-fifth of all 10-year-olds and one-fourth of 1-year-olds.
This may not matter to Republican candidates in tough primaries this year, who aren’t looking beyond their noses and figure they can’t afford to get outflanked by opponents who are “getting tough” on immigration. But they are in danger of taking an existing demographic problem facing the GOP and making it immeasurably worse, and more immediate.
Where is it most painful to be a highly visible incumbent politician at this particular moment in U.S. history? Perhaps it’s California, where current economic and budgetary discontents are compounding a growing public fury over chronically dysfunctional state government and an imprisoning constitution. Maybe it’s Florida, that fading Sunbelt powerhouse full of simmering regional and ethnic rivalries, whose perma-tanned governor has struggled to make up his mind which political party he belongs to.
But you couldn’t go far wrong by selecting Nevada, a state that shares Florida’s disastrous economic dependence on real-estate speculation and tourism — Nevada currently sports the second-highest unemployment rate in the nation, 13.4 percent, trailing only Michigan — and the special disappointment of being, for many residents, a Paradise Lost. The state’s own demographic and ideological diversity also rivals Florida’s, home as it is to a rapidly growing Latino population (which made up 15 percent of the electorate in 2008), plenty of extremely conservative Mormons, powerful and politically active labor unions, a libertarian heritage of legalized vice and a Republican Party moving so quickly to the right that you can barely keep up with it.
Moreover, Nevada’s three top elected officials are currently Sen. Harry Reid (D), Sen. John Ensign (R) and Gov. Jim Gibbons (R). Reid, the majority leader of the U.S. Senate and never terribly popular back home, has looked like a sitting duck for over a year. Ensign, once considered a rising conservative star, has been exposed as a sanctimonious hypocrite over the course of a particularly sordid adultery-and-cronyism scandal, in which a group of mysterious evangelical allies operating out of a compound on C Street in Washington, known variously as The Family or The Fellowship, were caught unsuccessfully trying to clean up his act or cover it up. Gibbons has had his own, somewhat more cartoonish series of sex scandals — although maybe they were just “relationship scandals,” if you buy his claim that he hasn’t had sex since the mid-’90s.
Luckily for him, Ensign is not up for reelection until 2012. Unluckily enough, Harry Reid is up for reelection in 2010, and, seeing as his son, Clark County (Las Vegas) Commission Chairman Rory Reid, is the frontrunner for the Democratic gubernatorial nomination, you’d think that Nevada Republicans would have a straight, clean shot at a sweep that dethrones the Reid dynasty. But it’s hardly that simple, thanks to Byzantine and fractious Republican primaries for both the Senate and the governorship (where Jim Gibbons is still a formidable candidate), the existence of an independent Tea Party ballot line and the always important factors of money and organization, where Democrats have a distinct advantage. Just six weeks before Primary Day, you’d have to say that handicapping Nevada’s political races is something of a crapshoot.
Dating all the way back to November 2008, Harry Reid’s “favorable” rating in Nevada polls has been wallowing monotonously in the high 30s and low 40s, deadly territory for an extremely well-known incumbent, and particularly for a national party leader who claims to be able to represent his state’s values and bring home the bacon as well. The difficulty that Republicans have experienced in recruiting a top-tier Senate candidate has newspapers hesitating to dust off obituaries to Reid’s Senate career. But in head-to-head polls with his most likely GOP opponents, Reid has persistently trailed all of them, sometimes by double digits, and almost never gaining much more than 40 percent of the vote.
After striking out in its attempts to recruit a strong candidate such as former Rep. Jon Porter, Republicans have on hand a field of three major candidates: casino owner, former state senator, party chairwoman, and ex-beauty queen Sue Lowden; realtor and famous-basketball-playing-son-of-famous-basketball-coach Danny Tarkanian; and right-wing grassroots favorite Sharron Angle. Until very lately, Lowden looked to be consolidating a strong lead for the nomination. Despite a somewhat moderate image (particularly on social issues), she won endorsements from national conservative figures like Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity, and benefited from the general impression that she was far and away the most electable of available Republicans.
But then, at a local candidate forum in early April, Lowden touted the idea that individuals should barter for health services as an alternative to Obamacare, making the particular mistake of mentioning the “olden days” practice of trading chickens for doctor visits. After Jay Leno and others started bagging on her for promoting “chickens for checkups,” Lowden made the puzzling decision to defend her statement — repeatedly — instead of brushing it off and moving on. Now the whole meme has gone very viral. There hasn’t been a Senate primary poll since this all happened, but Tarkanian and Angle — and for that matter, Harry Reid — have to be encouraged by all the laughter at Lowden.
Meanwhile, in the governor’s race, the Republicans’ frontrunner is former Attorney General Brian Sandoval, is struggling nearly as much as Lowden. The perpetually unpopular incumbent, Jim Gibbons, is playing every ideological angle to win re-nomination. Falling back on his traditional popularity among hard-core conservatives, Gibbons has boosted his anemic approval ratings by championing legal challenges to the new federal health reform legislation, and is accusing Sandoval — who has taken the supreme risk of refusing demands to take Grover Norquist’s no-tax-increase pledge — of being a moderate squish. Democrats, figuring that Gibbons is a much easier mark, have been running attack ads on Sandoval that echo conservative criticisms.
A late twist has been the reaction of Nevada Republicans to the draconian Arizona legislation requiring law-enforcement officials to demand proof of citizenship from people who raise “reasonable suspicion” that they are in the country illegally. Sandoval, who is Latino, immediately endorsed the Arizona law, indicating where he thinks his own political bread is buttered. Gibbons took a different tack, arguing that Nevada’s non-border location makes such tactics unnecessary. The third major candidate, former North Las Vegas Mayor Mike Montandon, who is trying to undercut Gibbons from the right, drew cheers during a recent candidates’ debate for taking the following position:
“Why are we answering questions on whether illegal immigration should be legal,” Montandon said. “I support what Arizona did absolutely.”
He added that he supports profiling, calling it the single greatest tool of law enforcement.
That ought to go over well with minority voters, eh?
Aside from the particular dynamics of the senatorial and gubernatorial races, Republicans are uneasily aware that they don’t match up well with Democrats in terms of money or campaign infrastructure. As one reporter put it last month:
The state party itself evoked laughter among several prominent Republicans I spoke to last week.
“There’s a whole lot of unproductive activity going on over there without any rhyme or reason,” said a Republican source, before unfurling a string of unsolicited insults at party leadership.
A key question would seem to be, “Where are the adults?” Can’t someone put a heavy hand on the shoulder of a top-tier candidate and say, “We need you,” or clear the field of primary challengers, or tell Ensign it’s time to step aside?
“That’s usually the role of the head of party,” another Republican source said. “But who is the head of the party? Yeah, there’s your answer.”
Meanwhile, the massive organizing efforts that Democrats put into the 2008 Nevada caucuses and general election are still bearing fruit, their impact sustained by Harry Reid’s campaign cash. Reid’s various campaign committees donated $660,000 — serious money in this relatively small state — to the Nevada Democratic Party in 2009 alone. By the end of March, he had raised over $16 million for his re-election (with an ultimate goal of $25 million) and, after a lot of early spending, still had over $9 million in cash on hand.
By contrast, Reid’s two likeliest general election opponents, Sue Lowden and Danny Tarkanian, who still have to expend themselves in a June primary slugfest, each had just over one quarter-million in the bank at the end of March. Both have some personal money to throw in, but not enough to keep up with Reid’s cash machine.
There are those who look at Nevada and conclude that nothing can save Harry Reid (or his son), not money, not organization, not a scattered and vulnerable Republican Party, not Latino outrage at GOP immigrant-bashing, not chickens-for-checkups, not a third-party candidate, and not even the possibility of a GOP ticket led by Jim Gibbons. It is, after all, a bad year to be an incumbent, much less a Democratic incumbent, much less the Democratic leader of the U.S. Senate. But add all of these factors together, in a year when Nevada Republicans are committing one unforced error after another, and almost anything could happen. Republicans probably shouldn’t bet the farm on victory.
Things look grim for British Prime Minister Gordon Brown. Heading into tonight’s third and final debate, his Labour Party trails not only the Conservatives, but even the Liberal Democrats, who usually finish a distant third. London odds-makers don’t give much for Brown’s chances of pulling off a Harry Truman-like upset.
If the pollsters and bookies are right, the May 6 election could end a remarkable, 13-year run in power by the “New Labour” tandem of Tony Blair and Gordon Brown. But in Britain, electoral victory is denominated in parliamentary seats, not popular votes. The Lib Dems’ unexpected rise, behind a breakout performance by party leader Nicholas Clegg in the first debate, has scrambled the race in ways that make a variety of untoward outcomes possible, if not probable.
Many observers are predicting a hung parliament if the Lib Dems win enough seats to deprive either of their opponents a majority. This would trigger intense efforts by Labour and the Tories to woo the Lib Dems into a coalition government. In any case, however, the result likely would be curtains for Gordon Brown.
Tonight’s debate is probably his last chance to reverse Labour’s slumping prospects. It’s on the economy, which would ordinarily be Brown’s forte, but Britain’s economy also has been hammered by the financial crisis. It’s also true that Labour governments, under pressure from traditional constituencies and the unreconstructed “Old Labour” left, spent heavily on public services. Now those services will likely face draconian cuts as the next government grapples with ways to whittle down a huge (by British standards) $236 billion deficit.
But the dismal economic picture isn’t Labour’s only problem. Public worries about immigration also have roiled the race. Brown stumbled yesterday when he was caught on tape calling one voter who expressed such qualms a “bigoted woman.” He then compounded the gaffe by going to her house to apologize, ensuring that the incident dominated campaign coverage.
If the episode underscored Brown’s lack of political touch, it ought to be said in fairness that 13 years is a long time for any party to hold power in Britain. Clegg has bolted from obscurity by tapping into the inchoate desire for “change” that another newcomer, Barack Obama, tapped so effectively here in 2008.
If this really is Labour’s last stand, it’s worth recalling a few things about its significance for U.S. progressives. First, “New Labour” was a joint, Blair-Brown project that borrowed heavily from Bill Clinton’s New Democrat innovation. In a similar fashion, they helped Labour cast off old socialist dogma and revive itself as a modernizing force not only in Britain but in center-left politics generally.
Not the least of New Labour’s achievements was a long economic boom whose chief architect, as Chancellor of the Exchequer, was none other than Gordon Brown. Unlike France and Germany, Britain enjoyed robust growth rates and low unemployment. It also depoliticized monetary policy, created new incentives for work, kept labor markets flexible and encouraged innovation and trade.
Finally, Blair and Brown were, and remain, sturdy friends of the United States. Blair stood with America after 9/11, was a forthright critic of the kind of fashionable anti-Americanism in which Clegg indulges, and risked his career by supporting the Iraq war. Brown likewise has firmly backed President Obama’s counterinsurgency strategy in Afghanistan, despite mounting pressures within his own party and a war-weary public to bring British troops home.
Americans of course have no business mucking around in British elections. But if Gordon Brown does go down next week, we should recognize at least that we have lost a staunch friend and faithful ally.
One of the most unnerving aspects of the recent health reform debate was the extent to which opponents of various Democratic plans (usually lumped together as “ObamaCare”) embraced and promoted outright falsehoods, most famously the idea that the legislation would encourage euthanasia-by-rationing.
Brendan Nyhan now has an important article at The Forum that not only looks at the role of deliberate misinformation in the “ObamaCare” debate, but compares it to a similar Big Lie that “stuck” during the earlier debate over the Clinton administration’s health reform proposal (i.e., the claim that the proposal would eliminate the ability of Americans to choose doctors). He notes the seminal role of pseudo-wonk Betsy McCaughey in both episodes of disinformation, and the importance of partisan conservative media in reinforcing fabricated claims.
Nyhan’s conclusion is sobering:
The evidence presented in this article suggests that misinformation played an important role in the two most recent debates over health care reform. While some critics have faulted the response of the Clinton and Obama administrations to these charges… the argument presented in this article suggests that political myths are extremely difficult to counter. For instance, proponents of reform might attempt to address concerns in the bill-writing process, but Betsy McCaughey’s 1994 article suggests that such disclaimers can be distorted or ignored. And false claims with no actual basis in legislation such as the “death panel” myth are especially insidious precisely because they cannot be addressed in the bill itself. As a result, until the media stops giving so much attention to misinformers, elites on both sides will often succeed in creating misperceptions, especially among sympathetic partisans. And once such beliefs take hold, few good options exist to counter them—correcting misperceptions is simply too difficult.
A particularly depressing finding of Nyhan’s is that belief in Big Lies about health reform actually increased among those Republicans who thought of themselves as well-informed on the subject. This reflects the experience many have had with conservative talk radio or Fox News fans who feel “empowered” by the “truth” about liberal policy ideas or politicians, and are exceptionally resistant to contrary facts or “objective” referees of the facts. Any progressive who’s done conservative call-in shows (or had extended discussions with conservative-activists friends or family) and dealt with inquisitors who perpetually suggest they are “on to you” and have divined your secret plans and motives knows exactly what I am talking about.
It’s almost certainly unfair and counterproductive, and in any event a waste of time, to criticize consumers of deliberate misinformation as ignorant. When it comes to complex topics like health care, even extremely well-informed people filter information — or misinformation — via ideological presumptions, partisanship, and the “trust factor” of where they turn to become informed.
The better course, as Nyhan argues, is to focus on the elites who invent and disseminate misinformation, and relentlessly undermine their bogus credibility. Serial offenders like McCaughey should be hooted off the public stage when they pop up again (as did, to some extent, happen during the ObamaCare debate). And politicians who retail misinformation should be held accountable just as much. Personally, I wish that much of the vast progressive sea of contempt for Sarah Palin’s rhetoric and mannerisms would instead be channeled into a relentless focus on her huge and unrepentent role — via a Facebook post, no less — in turning the lie about government-encouraged euthanasia into the Big Lie of “Obama death panels.” This despicable act, aimed at terrifying seniors and the families of those with disabilities, not her general lack of intellectual curiosity or her inexperience in governing, is what should disqualify her from any elected office at least until she confesses and seeks absolution.
This item is cross-posted at The Democratic Strategist.
This won’t come as a big shock to those who have been watching events in Utah, but a new survey of delegates to that state’s Republican Convention on May 8 shows GOP Sen. Bob Bennett on the brink of being denied renomination. Under Utah’s system, only the top two contestants at the state convention can proceed to a primary. Bennett’s running third, behind movement-conservative favorite Mike Lee and businessman Tim Bridgewater, both of whom are blasting the incumbent for insufficient conservatism.
According to the Mason-Dixon survey of state delegates, Bennett’s favorable/unfavorable ratio among these partisans who will determine his fate is an abominable 28/61. The survey’s second-choice analysis also indicates that if Bennett manages to get into second place ahead of Bridgewater, Lee might then get enough support to pass the 60% threshold that would give him the nomination without the trouble of a primary.
“Bob Bennett is toast,” concludes RedState proprietor Erick Erickson, who’s been conducting an Ahab-level obsessive campaign against Bennett for months.
The message to other Republican candidates down the road is No Enemies to the Right! No Friends to the Left!
Bennett’s primary sin to conservatives was his cosponsorship (with Ron Wyden) of a bipartisan universal health care proposal. This should be a particular lesson to Mitt Romney, whose endorsement of Bennett in his semi-home-state did neither man a bit of good.
Meanwhile, having left Bennett for dead, the purgemasters of the Right like Erickson have moved on to new tasks, such as the destruction of former Sen. Dan Coats of IN, who faces a primary on May 4.
Update: Nate Silver has more on the byzantine nominating process used by Utah Republicans, and suggests Bennett may still have a slight chance of surviving — but only a slight chance.
This morning’s biggest story is about what’s not happening. This weekend, Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) announced that he could not support the tripartisan climate bill in the Senate that he is co-sponsoring in the wake of reports that Democrats will be prioritizing immigration reform. Graham’s surprise move led to the scuttling of the bill’s long-anticipated rollout today — and grim predictions that the legislation may have breathed its last.
What ticked Graham off? Graham called the decision to move immigration to the top of the legislative agenda “nothing more than a cynical political ploy.” He expressed his belief that with immigration taking up badly needed bandwidth in the Senate, the chances for climate policy’s passage would be slim. “I’ve got some political courage, but I’m not stupid,” he said.
For their part, Democrats are continuing to push forward with both priorities. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid underscored his commitment to passing climate legislation this session, saying that “energy could be next if it’s ready.”
Iffy though its chances of passage may be, it would be a real shame if the climate bill were to not get a chance at all. For weeks, Graham, Sen. John Kerry (D-MA) and Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-CT) have been working to put together a workable compromise that could get 60 votes. The bill they were to present today seemed promising, their efforts winning the support not just of progressives but of energy companies like Exelon, ConocoPhillips and Duke Energy. It’s a wobbly coalition that may not be easily put back together, especially if the Republicans reduce the Democrats’ margins in Congress (or take it back altogether) this November. If climate change legislation doesn’t move this year, it will be a while — a long while if Obama loses in 2012 — before it gets revisited.
As others have pointed out, Graham’s hissy fit over immigration seems mighty hypocritical given that he wrote about the urgency of passing immigration reform just over a month ago in the Washington Post. But that doesn’t make his criticism incorrect. He’s right that the decision to devote Senate attention to another, no less divisive priority is going to dim the prospects for the climate bill.
While the political calculus of fast-tracking immigration makes sense — it’s clearly intended to fire up the Hispanic base, which has felt neglected under Obama — it’s also a shortsighted decision. Both issues are important, of course, but momentum was already behind climate legislation. The House had already passed it, Kerry, Graham and Lieberman had lined up crucial industry support, and an environmental community that was growing disillusioned with the administration could at least rally behind a bill that would put a cap on carbon. If the administration fails to throw its full weight behind getting climate over this one last hump, then the disappointment of the environmental community will have been earned.
A Larger Failing
But the death of climate policy — and, yes, we shouldn’t shovel dirt on it quite yet — speaks to a larger failing. Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-OH), who considers the issue one of his top five priorities, told the Washington Post that when he’s back home talking to constituents, “nobody talks about this. I never hear about it.” His experience is borne out by polls, which show increasingpublicapathy about solving our energy and climate problems.
It’s understandable that an abstract threat like climate change would give way to more narrow concerns in a time of economic crisis. And to be sure, the media and our leadership — particularly on the right — bear some of the blame for the public disinterest. For their part, progressives perhaps haven’t done the best job of framing the issue and selling it to a skeptical public.
But the pattern of the past year has been worrisome. Despite the scale of our public problems, we shown little appetite for bold, collective action. We’ve seen it in our quivering in the face of health reform’s passage, in our refusal to accept the connection between taxation and benefits, in our willingness to be gulled by cynical entertainers.
When he came into office, President Obama promised to bring an end to the “smallness of our politics.” Despite some signal accomplishments, he hasn’t succeeded in reforming the mindset of our political class. But Washington isn’t the only problem. To overcome the smallness of our politics, it’s not just our politicians who need to think big — the American people do, too.
How to tell a good climate bill from a bad one? This series will guide you through the main issues that are likely to arise in the coming weeks as the Senate takes on climate change. In this post we highlight issues that are very important — but not quite essential — in climate policy. These ideas will likely play a key role in the eventual passage of legislation from the Senate. (To read the other posts in the series, click here.)
In our last post we identified the two absolutely critical issues for any climate policy: putting a price on carbon and targeting meaningful emissions reductions. Pricing carbon imposes costs on emitters, thereby changing behavior and encouraging innovation, but it will also generate revenues. Once they are generated, who receives them and how they are spent are important elements of climate policy.
Category II Issues: Key Elements of Climate Policy
#1: Public revenue or private giveaways?
If carbon is priced with a tax, it will generate new government revenues. If, as seems likely, carbon is priced with some form of cap-and-trade, things get a little more complicated. For cap-and-trade to work, emissions allowances must be allocated in some way. The two simplest ways to allocate allowances are to give them away for free, or to auction them to the highest bidder. Only the latter would generate any new public revenues. Allowances are assets with real value, so giving them away is no different from a government subsidy to the recipient.
Auctioning allowances is generally more efficient than giving them away — society as a whole is better off the more allowances are auctioned. Nevertheless, many groups of emitters or industries have made arguments (and will continue to do so) that they should be given free allowances. They argue the impact of climate policy on their industries will be too onerous or that they represent the interests of their consumers. Generally speaking, these claims are old-fashioned Washington handout-seeking behavior.
Fights over allowance allocation were predictably rampant when the House considered its bill, Waxman-Markey, last year. Comparatively few allowances would be auctioned under Waxman-Markey, especially before 2020, and substantial allowance handouts (35 percent of allowances) would be given to local gas and electricity distribution companies, ostensibly to protect consumers from increases in electricity prices. It is very likely that allocation will again be a central (possibly the central) political issue in the Senate debate.
A carbon price won’t affect every person, firm, or industry equally. In particular, low-income households will feel the effects of a carbon price far more than wealthy households, and an equitable climate policy should compensate the losers to offset that disparity. The best way to do so would be to compensate them with cash (through direct rebates or tax cuts) raised from auctions – yet another factor in their favor. Under a giveaway scenario, the government could hand out free allowances to utilities, hoping that they pass along savings in the form of lower energy prices. That may help consumers, but they would still be better off if they receive the savings directly out of auction or tax revenues and can make their own choices about how to spend that compensation—more on how these revenues could be spent in the next section. Besides, lower consumer energy prices can blunt the price signal a cap sends, leading to increased energy usage.
However attractive auctioning all allowances is, it’s probably not politically realistic. Handouts will probably have to be made to some industries to get votes for the bill (though there’s still hope, on both the right and left, that the general welfare can prevail over handouts to special interests ) In any case, auctions are the most desirable distribution mechanism, and should be a major component of any climate legislation.
#2: What do we do with the money?
Assuming you’ve auctioned at least some allowances (or have revenues from a carbon tax), what should the government do with the money? There is no easy answer here, but in general we have three options:
a) Reduce existing taxes
If the government receives revenues from a carbon price, one response is to cut the taxes already on the books. Reducing other taxes shifts the U.S. tax burden from those who currently bear it (primarily income earners) to carbon emitters and, indirectly, to consumers of carbon-intensive goods and services. In general, this is a good thing, for the simple reason that you are lowering taxes on something you generally want people to do (work) and raising them on something you don’t want them to do (emit carbon). In economic terms, you move from taxing something we generally think has positive externalities to something we know has negative externalities. And politically, who doesn’t like lower taxes? One drawback is on that you may end up reducing progressive income taxes in favor of carbon pricing, whose costs might be harder to bear for those who can least afford it.
b) Dividends to consumers
If you’re troubled by the possibly regressive character of tax cuts, but think returning carbon price revenues to the people ultimately affected by increased prices is a good idea, then a good alternative is direct payments to consumers. This is the “cap-and-dividend” approach taken by the Cantwell-Collins bill in the Senate that Danny wrote about recently. Under cap-and-dividend, revenues generated by an allowance auction (or a carbon tax) are used to make payments directly to consumers. In other words, every household would get a check. Because all households would get equal payments, the plan turns a somewhat regressive carbon price scheme on its head by transferring money from those with a large carbon footprint (often the wealthy) to those with a smaller one (often the poor). Politically, it’s broadly appealing—even conservatives that tend to oppose redistribution of wealth find a lot to like, in large part because dividends “cut government out of the picture.”
Instead of sending everyone the same amount, it’s also possible to try to identify specific losers from climate policy and compensate them directly. One example of such relative losers might be trade-exposed industries, who would stand to lose competitive ground against foreign firms not subject to a carbon price (more on this issue later in the series). Making payments to industries instead of households isn’t usually characterized as cap-and-dividend, but the difference is only distributional—who gets the money. One disadvantage is that direct dividends pose a bureaucratic challenge — there is no clear mechanism for distributing them.
c) Public goods
Alternatively, the government could spend the revenues from an auction. In some cases, the government can create greater benefits by spending revenues than by giving them back. Restricting ourselves to climate-related spending, good examples might be energy R&D, investments in adaptation to climate change, or efforts to reduce emissions internationally or verify international emissions offsets. Indeed, the federal government will need to spend money in some of these areas regardless because the private sector may underinvest in energy R&D, and will almost certainly underinvest in climate change adaptation and international mitigation efforts. The Waxman-Markey bill devotes auction revenues to many of these areas, and a Senate bill probably will (and, in large part, should) do the same.
Of course, carbon price revenues could also be used for any other government expenditure, from education to infrastructure or defense. Revenues could also be used to pay down the debt. Any of these might be worthwhile expenditures, but it’s important to remember that any revenues that are not returned through dividends or lowering other taxes represent a tax increase on anyone who uses carbon—that is, everyone. Opponents of action on climate often characterize it as a major tax increase. To the extent that revenues from a carbon price are dedicated to unrelated government expenditures, this criticism isn’t dirty politics, it’s a fact. Taxing and spending on a given project may or may not be a good idea, but bringing carbon into the picture doesn’t change the fact that it’s taxing and spending.
#3: Market design: banking and borrowing
A major policy and political priority for climate legislation is to reduce emissions as effectively and cheaply as possible. Whether this goal proves to be attainable or not depends greatly on how cap-and-trade markets are designed. While these issues tend to fly under the radar of the political debate — partially because they are complex and partially because they are not very sexy — they have major implications not only for how firms will behave under a cap-and-trade system, but the timing of actual emissions reductions.
There are multiple options for controlling the costs of climate legislation compliance (most of which will covered in our next post), but the key aspects are the closely related concepts of banking and borrowing of allowances. The general concept of banking isn’t terribly complicated: firms ‘bank’ allowances by overcomplying with the cap (they reduce their emissions more than is required) throughout the program, thus building a surplus of allowances that they can use at a future date. Similarly, firms may choose to ‘borrow’ allowances, by using an allowance from a future year, then repaying that allowance with future reductions (possibly with interest).
Polluting firms have two reasons why they want to be able to bank and borrow. First, the path of the lowering cap (established by legislation) will likely not be set in a way that is optimal for regulated parties. Banking and borrowing credits gives them the flexibility to take an emissions-reduction path that is most cost effective, either by filling their bank with credits through overcompliance in the early years of the market or by borrowing in later years if they expect some kind of efficiency increase to come through at a certain future time. Second, banking and borrowing can protect firms against unforeseen shocks to their compliance paths. For instance, a company may have unanticipated problems that force it to use a more carbon-intensive energy source, increasing its emissions above the number of allowances it possesses. Borrowing allows the firm to get more allowances now in exchange for stronger future reductions.
While some may claim that banking and borrowing look like a way to game the system, they are simply mechanisms to help firms control costs and reduce their emissions as efficiently as possible. A strict cap-and-trade system where firms can only trade amongst each other would be more expensive. Banking and borrowing helps reduce costs while still achieving the cumulative emissions reductions desired. A study by Resources for the Future scholars Harrison Fell and Dick Morgenstern contends that borrowing generates significant cost savings, especially when the cap is being lowered at some rate (which is the case in all serious climate proposals). If borrowing is restricted, costs go up.
Allowance banking and borrowing are key issues for climate policy because they will not only play a major role in the behavior of firms in the cap-and-trade market, but they will also have a strong influence on the actual path of emissions reduction. This gets back to the point we made in the last post, where we said that specific reduction targets don’t matter as much cumulative emissions reductions. The ability to bank means that carbon polluters may strongly overcomply, meaning that they will reduce far beyond the 17-20 percent reduction goals in 2020. Analyses from the EPA and the EIA back this up. The flipside, however, is reductions in later years may be less than the cap as companies start to cash in their banked allowances. As long as the cumulative emissions over the life of the regulation come in under the cap, it’s fine for the year-to-year levels to be ruled by how regulated parties bank and borrow.
The Bottom Line
In the last post, we presented three issues that we deemed essential to any climate bill. Here we discuss the merely important:
How are emissions allowances allocated—are they auctioned, or given away?
How are the public revenues from climate policy spent?
Is the allowance market designed for economic efficiency—does it allow banking and borrowing?
In our next post, we will travel further down the rabbit hole and address some further issues climate policy that are still relevant and meaningful, but less important than what we’ve talked about so far.
The following is an excerpt from a column by Ed Kilgore in today’s New Republic Online:
The first thing you need to understand about Florida’s political climate is that its seemingly endless summer of Boom Times seems to be coming to a close. The vast migration to the state that caused its population to increase over 16 percent since the 2000 census seems to be winding down, and last year, shockingly enough, it actually lost population. The state’s economy is suffering from problems that are deeper than any business cycle: Its 2.7 percent drop in per capita personal income has pushed the state near the bottom of rankings by percent change of personal income data. State government and politics have followed suit, inaugurating a period of unhappy partisan and ideological wrangling with no clear outcome in sight.
Many of the troubles resemble the problems of Florida’s distant political cousins, Arizona and Nevada, both Sunbelt areas with significant retiree populations that have also been hit by an economic triple-whammy of rapidly declining housing values, reduced tourism, and eroded retirement savings. Not surprisingly, all three have developed volatile, toxic political climates this election cycle. (In Nevada, the only politician who is perhaps less popular than the Harry Reid is the Republican governor, Jim Gibbons. In Arizona, the 2008 Republican presidential nominee, John McCain, whom you’d expect to be riding high along with the GOP’s national renaissance, is scrambling to the right to survive a primary challenge by a defeated former congressman and radio talk show host, J.D. Hayworth.)
In addition, Florida has certainly suffered from the global economic slump because it is a major magnet for foreign investment. It also shares some of the structural problems of its otherwise very different Southern neighbors, particularly chronic underinvestment in public education. And when it comes to the fiscal and political consequences of a bad economy, Florida is one of just a handful of states with no personal income tax, which has made property-tax rates on steadily decreasing real estate values a red-hot issue (a billion-dollar deal that allowed the Seminole Indian tribe to expand its gambling operations was one of the only things that allowed legislators to balance the latest state budget).
So the question is, what does this mean for Charlie Crist, the erratic and heavily-tanned governor who is throwing the calculations of both major political parties into chaos? And what does it mean for Democrats, whose electoral future continues to depend, in part, on the whims of Florida’s diverse and fickle voters?
Throughout the progressive blogosphere, Earth Day generates tons of buzz as like-minded liberals gather in chat rooms and on message boards for an annual rally to protect Mother Earth. Re-energizing (pun intended) focus on the environment in the wake of a so-so Copenhagen Summit is a worthy endeavor, of course, but it can sometimes feel like preaching to the choir.
Meanwhile, the Kerry-Graham-Lieberman bill is languishing in the Senate with little hope of movement before November’s elections. And despite its tri-partisan co-sponsorship, conservatives continue to insist on peddling the notion that climate change and Santa Claus share more than a melting polar ice cap. Meanwhile, their supporters continue to buy it, grasping at incontrovertible “proof” like leaked emails from Cambridge.
While the right is intent on pretending climate change doesn’t exist, there’s one aspect of it that’s getting tougher and tougher to ignore: energy security. Not everyone believes that the earth is warming, but most eagerly accept the idea that America should be buying less gasoline from the Middle East. The most credible messenger is the military — the one organization whose mission demands that it become more energy efficient.
[T]he most innovative and effective actors in the carbon-reduction arena bear zero resemblance to this outdated cartoon. No hemp-wearing hippies here: Today, it’s the Army, Air Force, Navy, Marines, and Coast Guard who are aggressively pursuing plans for sustainable energy, reducing carbon, and achieving energy independence.
It’s no mystery why: Our armed men and women are truly the point of the spear. The services aren’t motivated just by the “soft power” of moral authority or the pursuit of idealism for its own sake. It’s in fact “hard power” concerns—the security of our troops, the economic independence of our energy supply, and the long-term need to better control the geopolitical implications of climate change—that have driven the military to take the lead.
Consider the facts. Today, an infantry soldier on a three-day mission in Afghanistan carries over 25 pounds of batteries to charge his equipment, hampering his maneuverability and can even causing muscular-skeletal injuries. In Iraq and Afghanistan, U.S. forces have suffered chilling casualties guarding convoys of trucks carrying oil. Meanwhile, every $10 increase in the price of oil translates into a $1.3 billion increase in the Pentagon’s operating costs.
In all of these cases, clean energy and efficiency programs would not only help reduce our carbon output and achieve energy efficiency; they would directly increase the effectiveness of our military.
Remember in the summer of 2008 when the price of a gallon of gas ran to a shocking $4? Well, multiply that by 100 — literally — to get cost of a gallon every day in Afghanistan. By the time you add the transportation price and supply losses from attacked convoys, the Pentagon estimates that fuel costs the American taxpayer $400 a gallon. And much of that $400/gallon is put in Abrams tanks that get… wait for it… just over a half-mile to the gallon. Ergo, one mile in an Abrams tank costs about $700.
The good news is that organizations like Operation Free — a group of military veterans who recognize the life and death nature of fuel efficiency – are traveling the country to promote the policies that will improve our energy security. So whether or not you “buy” climate change – and frankly, you really should — it’s tough to argue against a military that is trying to cut the tether to carbon-based fuels that hamper mission effectiveness. Focusing on this aspect of the issue may well be the best bipartisan way to move public opinion on reducing the use of carbon-based fuels.
PPI has long been a proponent of an economy-wide cap-and-trade system to confront the problem of climate change. But as the fortunes of cap-and-trade legislation in the Senate fade, we need to begin looking at other options before Congress. In the first post of this series, we looked at the Cantwell-Collins “cap-and-dividend” bill. This post examines the Carper-Alexander “3P” plan introduced this February, a bill that regulates only non-greenhouse-gas pollutants that some have suggested could be expanded into an electric-sector carbon cap-and-trade plan.
In early February, Sens. Tom Carper (D-DE) and Lamar Alexander (R-TN) introduced what we will call the “3P” (P for pollutant) bill, which tightens emissions of SO2, NOx and mercury from coal and oil-fired power plants through cap-and-trade markets. While the bill covers only non-greenhouse-gas pollutants, it has been discussed as a possible template for a climate bill targeting the electricity sector — or “4P.”
Carper-Alexander is nothing radically new. Considering how knowledgeable the American public is about cap-and-trade in general, it’s a safe bet to say most people don’t know that there is already a cap-and-trade market working to reduce air pollution from fossil fuel-fired power plants in the U.S. as we speak.
If you’ve ever had any discussions about market solutions to pollution problems, then chances are you’ve heard about the 1990 amendments to the Clean Air Act, which established a pollution reduction market to address acid rain in the Northeast. Specifically, it created a cap-and-trade market for sulfur dioxide (SO2: primarily responsible for acid rain, not a greenhouse gas) and nitrogen oxides (NO and NO2, both commonly labeled NOx: harmful to humans, primary precursor to ground-level ozone, which is a greenhouse gas) for the eastern half of the country. Since its inception in 1990, it has impressively reduced acid rain problems at much lower costs than initially predicted. It is the example advocates and economists point to when discussing how cap-and-trade can help control greenhouse gas emissions. This program was further strengthened in 2005 when the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) issued the Clean Air Interstate Rule (CAIR), which established permanent caps and aggressive reductions for SO2 and NOx emissions beyond the Clean Air Act.
Designed to protect human health, CAIR is in poor health itself. A D.C. Circuit Court in 2008 found it failed to follow Clean Air Act statutory mandates and vacated the rule. The court then reinstated it under the stipulation that the EPA make some significant changes. The EPA is currently retooling CAIR to bring it in line with the court ruling. Just like with carbon emissions, however, it would be nice if Congress stepped up to the plate and made a law that clearly told the EPA how to administer these regulations. Unlike on carbon emissions, there’s a chance Congress can act relatively quickly.
The Basics
The Carper-Alexander bill sets a 3.5 million ton cap for a national market of SO2 emissions in 2012, then ratchets it down to two million tons in 2015 and 1.5 million tons in 2018, an 80 percent reduction of 2008 emissions. This final limit would remain unless after 2021 the EPA finds a lower cap is needed to protect public health.
The NOx market would operate slightly differently, as the country would be split into two zones, with the eastern states and western states each getting their own NOx market. The eastern market will face a cap of 1.39 million tons in 2012, which will tighten to 1.3 million tons by 2020. The western market will be capped at 510,000 tons in 2012, cranking down to 320,000 ton by 2020. When combined, the two markets will reduce NOx emissions from 2008 levels by 53 percent. The bill calls for mercury to be reduced by 90 percent by 2015, but it is not regulated in a market. Rather, the bill sets a cap for mercury (no trading) and leaves it to the EPA to promulgate the program rules.
A 4P bill could be very similar to the 3P proposal. Likely, the bill would establish a single market for CO2 emissions from power plants with reduction goals for future years, likely extending out to 2020. The bill could possibly call for New Source Performance Standards on all four pollutants for new plants. It might also include offset provisions for CO2 production. This legislative approach could be appealing if a more comprehensive proposal fails to gain support in the Senate and legislators begin to look for smaller-scale, more piecemeal approaches to emissions reduction.
The Good
The 3P bill takes aggressive action to reduce harmful air pollutants that derive from the combustion of fossil fuels, namely coal and oil, for electricity generation. Even though it targets only non-greenhouse gas pollutants, 3P could actually lead to indirect climate change benefits. While pollutants capped under the bill can be lowered through the use of filters and other technologies, a 3P scheme could also spur plant upgrades, the retirement of older (and dirtier) plants, and fuel-switching to less carbon-intensive sources, including natural gas, renewables, nuclear and hydropower — all of which would lead to lower carbon emissions. By successfully applying a cap-and-trade system for mitigating environmental damages, 3P also reinforces the notion that these systems can work in the real world without harming the economy.
Furthermore, 3P saves the EPA from legal limbo by clearly establishing the reduction goals for SO2, NOx and mercury emissions over the next 10 years and providing clarity for both firms and regulators. The bill also seems politically innocuous — even infamous climate change denier Sen. Jim Inhofe has said vaguely positive things about it. If the Obama administration goes looking for a bipartisan win on the environmental front, it may look to push the 3P.
The Bad
As already mentioned, 3P is not a climate bill, though it may have some indirect climate benefits. But even a 4P climate bill would be less than ideal. If CO2 were added to the 3P’s list of targeted pollutants, the bill would still fall short as it would regulate only the electricity sector — transportation, manufacturing and other carbon-emitting sectors would evade regulation. Electricity generation accounts for roughly one-third of total greenhouse gas emissions in the U.S., meaning that a 4P bill would still be far less preferable than an economy-wide cap-and-trade system.
Additionally, were a 4P bill to be structured similarly to the current 3P bill, it would give a great deal of authority for market design and administration to the EPA as CO2 would technically be regulated under the Clean Air Act. Regardless of your opinion about the EPA’s ability to properly administer a massive emissions market, it’s a political sticking point, as highlighted by current proposals to strip EPA of its authority to regulate greenhouse gases.
The Upshot
The 3P bill could provide a viable pathway for carbon regulation of the electricity sector. If the highly anticipated tri-partisan climate bill from Sens. John Kerry (D-MA), Joe Lieberman (I-CT) and Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) does not create the kind of momentum for climate and energy legislation the authors are hoping for (more on that in the next entry), one option could be for the Senate to take a more piecemeal, sector-by-sector approach, in which a 4P bill (SO2, NOx, mercury and CO2) moves forward.
Both Carper and Alexander have sponsored carbon emissions legislation specific to electricity generation in past sessions of Congress. Both those bills called for electricity-specific cap-and-trade markets to reduce carbon emissions. Carper has signaled he’s open to incorporating his bill into a broader climate bill, though it’s unclear if he meant including CO2 in the structure of his bill or working the SO2, NOx and mercury caps into another piece of legislation.
The Carper-Alexander bill provides a simple structure, and clarifies existing regulations within EPA. It would not be an ideal approach to emissions reduction, but if all else fails, it could provide a workable jumpstart. The Clean Act Air showed that cap-and-trade can work once before, and it might have a chance to do it again.
Fifty-three hours — that is how long it took our law enforcement agencies to 
Like observers from all over the partisan and ideological spectrum, I’ve been following the fallout from Arizona’s new immigration law (compounded by conflicting reports that the Obama administration and/or congressional Democratic leaders might be moving up federal immigration legislation in the queue) very closely, given the implications this issue has for both 2010 and (particularly) beyond.
Things look grim for British Prime Minister Gordon Brown. Heading into tonight’s third and final debate, his Labour Party trails not only the Conservatives, but even the Liberal Democrats, who usually finish a distant third. London odds-makers don’t give much for Brown’s chances of pulling off a Harry Truman-like upset.
One of the most unnerving aspects of the recent health reform debate was the extent to which opponents of various Democratic plans (usually lumped together as “ObamaCare”) embraced and promoted outright falsehoods, most famously the idea that the legislation would encourage euthanasia-by-rationing.
This won’t come as a big shock to those who have been watching events in Utah, but a new 
This morning’s biggest story is about what’s not happening. This weekend, Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) 
In our last post we identified the two absolutely critical issues for any climate policy: putting a price on carbon and targeting meaningful emissions reductions. Pricing carbon imposes costs on emitters, thereby changing behavior and encouraging innovation, but it will also generate revenues. Once they are generated, who receives them and how they are spent are important elements of climate policy.
The first thing you need to understand about Florida’s political climate is that its seemingly endless summer of Boom Times seems to be coming to a close. The vast migration to the state that caused its population to increase over 16 percent since the 2000 census seems to be winding down, and last year, shockingly enough, it actually 
Throughout the progressive blogosphere, Earth Day generates tons of buzz as like-minded liberals gather in chat rooms and on message boards for an annual rally to protect Mother Earth. Re-energizing (pun intended) focus on the environment in the wake of a so-so Copenhagen Summit is a worthy endeavor, of course, but it can sometimes feel like preaching to the choir.
In early February, Sens. Tom Carper (D-DE) and Lamar Alexander (R-TN) introduced what we will call the “3P” (P for pollutant) bill, which tightens emissions of SO2, NOx and mercury from coal and oil-fired power plants through cap-and-trade markets. While the bill covers only non-greenhouse-gas pollutants, it has been discussed as a possible template for a climate bill targeting the electricity sector — or “4P.”