Cap-And-Trade "Three-Card Monte" Dead For 2009

Cap-And-Trade "Three-Card Monte" Dead For 2009
http://globaleconomicanalysis.blogspot.com/2009/11/cap-and-trade-three-card-monte-dead-for.html

Typically, one of the best thing Congress ever does is nothing. And so it is again with the Cap-And-Trade energy bill. Thankfully, Senate Climate Bill Delay Raises Doubt on Chance for U.S. Law.

The U.S. Senate won’t try to pass a bill limiting U.S. greenhouse-gas emissions for months, clouding the prospects for final legislation as the Obama administration focuses on health care and the economy.

“We’re going to try to do that sometime in the spring,” Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, a Nevada Democrat, said of climate-change legislation in remarks to reporters yesterday. He didn’t cite a reason for the delay.

President Barack Obama had sought Senate action on a measure, already passed by the House, in time for talks in Copenhagen next month on a new global climate treaty. The Senate slowdown further jeopardizes the measure’s chances of passage, Whitney Stanco, an analyst in Washington for Concept Capital, said in a report today.

“The spring timeline would push the debate closer to the 2010 mid-term elections, potentially setting lawmakers up for a difficult vote before they face their constituents in the ballot box,” said Stanco, whose company advises investors.

Senator Barbara Boxer, a California Democrat and chairman of the panel, said this week that lawmakers will be too busy debating health care, job creation and banking legislation to take up cap-and-trade proposals. “By the time you turn around, it’s March,” Boxer told reporters.

“The Senate is far from the 60 votes needed to move a climate-change bill and that is unlikely to change as long as the economy continues to underperform,” said Thomas Mann, a political analyst at Washington-based Brookings Institution in an e-mail yesterday. “If Obama succeeds in getting a health- reform bill and financial regulation, I think his energies in 2010 will be focused on jobs and the economy.”

(more at link)

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What do you all think about Cap and Trade? I know many working in defense who say their companies have already changed to adapt the the eventual passage of cap and trade. Others working for the government also feel cap and trade is pretty much a done deal. Do you think it will pass? Is it beneficial for the environment if it passes? Why does the right have a problem with this?

I think this blogger has a political agenda that clouds his thinking, but recognize that many on the right are fighting cap and trade simply because it is proposed under this administration. Ironic since the right always claims that it's union leaders who are luddites unwilling to adapt to necessary changes, yet here they are trying to stall cap and trade with (like healthcare) no alternative plan for moving forward to address climate change.

Anyway, any thoughts on this subject would be greatly appreciated. Thanks!

will not be passed next year. Yes there will be some talk btu when all is said and done much more will be said then done.