Rep. Lee Terry On Cap & Trade
I just finished interviewing Rep. Lee Terry, (R-NE), about the House Cap and Trade legislation. I’d like to thank Rep. Terry, who was more than generous with his time today.
The first question I hasked Rep. Terry was whether there was any breaking news from today’s hearing. He said that David Sokol’s testimony put the Democrats on the defensive. Rep. Terry said that his staff will be posting the video of that later today.
Rep. Terry also made mention of the fact that the Blue Dogs had either been bought off or they were threatened into supporting this legislation. Rep. Collin Peterson threatened to kill the bill unless he got some concessions for Red River Valley farmers. It was Rep. Terry’s understanding that Rep. Peterson has now agreed to hold a single hearing on the bill and that he’s now supporting it. Rep. Terry said that he couldn’t confirm whether Rep. Peterson had won any concessions from Waxman-Markey.
What he was sure of is that alot of additional allowances were given on a purely political basis to buy Democratic votes. I asked whether the committee used a formula to determine their caps. Rep. Terry confirmed that that hadn’t happened. Rep. Terry noted that Republicans weren’t in the room when these caps were determined.
I said that it sounded like the bill was a purely political bill than a science-based bill. Rep. Terry said that that was an accurate description. On the issue of science, I asked whether CO2 was considered a pollutant prior to the writing of this bill. Rep. Terry said one of the provisions in the bill is to designate CO2 as a pollutant.
I asked Rep. Terry if Republicans were putting a graphic together showing which congressional districts had won additional allowances. I was told that that type of chart hadn’t been put together but that he’d put his staff on that ASAP. Check back to this blog to look the chart over.
What I’m looking for is to see if there’s (a) a correlation between the additional allowances and Blue Dogs, (b) a correlation between the additional allowances and Democrats in general and (c) there are any Republicans who got additional allowances. I’ll be surprised if any Republicans got additional allowances.
Finally, I told Rep. Terry about Minnesota State Rep. Mike Beard’s, (R-Prior Lake), contention that solar and wind will never produce enough energy to be a baseline energy. Rep. Terry agreed that that won’t happen anytime soon. I asked Rep. Terry if he agreed that, at this point, green energy was an expensive form of energy. Rep. Terry strongly agreed with that.
Again, I’d like to thank Rep. Terry for taking the time for this interview and I’d like to thank his staff for putting this interview together. This was an informative interview, something that gave me alot of information to process.
Finally, I was impressed with Rep. Terry’s on-point, concise answers. I didn’t get any answers that were evasive or long-winded. I just got alot of facts about the process and about the minor role that science is playing in putting this bill together.
Technorati Tags: Energy, Cap And Trade, National Energy Tax, Taxes, Allowances, Collin Peterson, Blue Dogs, Politics, Science, Henry Waxman, Ed Markey, Democrats, Lee Terry, David Sokol, Mike Beard, Baseline Energy, Republicans
Cross-posted at LetFreedomRingBlog
June 10th, 2009 at 3:27 am
Are these people serious? They want to designat CO2 as a pollutant. What they hell do they think plants need to survive. Plants take in CO2 and breath out oxygen. It’s like we are living in a freaking backwards demension.
June 10th, 2009 at 1:21 pm
This is only the begining, (they hope). If they can convince a gullible public that CO2 is a pollutant, they can dictate, even more of our personal lives.
What kind of tinny death trap to drive, to where you set the hot water heater, to how much sugar you can use per cup of coffee.
Ironic thing is, it has nothing to do with your personal safety, as much as it do with destroying the currency, destroying the free market capitalism and the economy that makes your lifestyle so despicable in their eyes, and most of all its keeping them and their screwed up Marxist idealism and social engineering policies in power.