Bush Air Pollution Stalls in Committee

WASHINGTON -- Supporters of President Bush's air-pollution plan on Wednesday renewed their push to win its enactment but appear to lack the votes to advance it in the Senate.

Democrats on the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, along with Sen. Jim Jeffords, a Vermont independent, and moderate Republican Sen. Lincoln Chafee of Rhode Island, can keep the bill bottled up in the 18-member committee, according to committee staff.

They favor adding regulation of carbon dioxide, the chief "greenhouse" gas blamed for global warming, to the three pollutants the Bush administration proposes for its emissions-trading plan: mercury, a toxic metal; sulfur dioxide, which forms acid rain; and nitrogen oxides, a contributor to smog.

Republican senators favoring the Bush proposal hope that opponents will at least allow for a debate of the plan on the Senate floor. The Bush administration has been trying for three years to get Congress to endorse it.

http://www.newsday.com/news/politics/wire/sns-ap-air-pollution,0,7775119.story?coll=sns-ap-politics-headlines

Unless dems are the majority party, the push in RI to replace Chafee is going to have elements of counter productivity.

They'll never give up the real problem, their precious dirty oil.

seat. If he will allow something like this to go through out of spite if the Dems actually have the NERVE to run a strong candidate against him, then he can be pressured by the WH anyway.

If he wants to vote for Reid for Majority Leader then we shouldn't challenge him, otherwise fight for every seat.

Ha! An environmentalist must be writing the headlines at NewDay today.

"This would set us back 25 or 30 years on controls that we know are necessary," said John Paul, supervisor of a six-county air pollution control agency in Dayton, Ohio.

Aw, what does he know, he is probably one of those junk-scientists. </end>

Chafee's seat needs to be protected, the environment is counting on her.

For SO2 and NOx? And Bush is acting like he came up with it?

http://www.epa.gov/airmarkt/trading/index.html