Climate, Politics/Capitol Light©, is a service of The JBS Group and Civil Notion
 
Volume 1                                                     September 16, 2019                                                                    Issue 27

Show us the money. Congress will move spending legislation on multiple fronts this week, possibly including the Energy and Water Development bill in the Senate and a stopgap measure in the House.

Lawmakers are pressing to pass fiscal 2020 spending bills before the new fiscal year begins Oct. 1 amid partisan splits over funding levels and policy riders.

Leaders in both chambers say they want to avert a shutdown in the fiscal new year by moving a temporary funding measure. The House is set to act on one this week.

The Senate is tentatively set for a procedural vote that would allow it to consider its first fiscal 2020 bills — the Energy-Water and Defense measures — in one package. Sixty votes would be needed to advance the bill, meaning Democrats could filibuster it.

Senate appropriators approved both measures last week, but only the Energy-Water bill had bipartisan support. Democrats opposed the Defense measure because it would help fund President Trump's $5 billion border wall.

If the Senate passes Energy-Water, it would be one of the most significant measures related to climate change to pass the chamber this Congress. The bill includes substantial increases in the budgets of DOE’s Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy and ARPA-E. The Senate version includes more funds than the House version. (E&E News)

• It’s likely at this point that the Democrats will try to add riders to the appropriations bills in violation of the non-binding agreement made as a part of the budget deal Congressional leaders made with the White House before the August recess.
• It’s agreed that a continuing resolution will be needed as there are only two weeks left before the end of the current fiscal year. The agreement is likely to extend the deadline for a deal to around Thanksgiving.
• Although there’s no appetite for a government shutdown, there is growing enmity between the Democrats, Senate Republicans, and the White House so another game of “chicken” may yet be played.
  

                    Climate, Politics/Capitol Light©, is a service of The JBS Group and Civil Notion
 
 
Volume 1                                                    August 12, 2019                                                                           Issue 22
 
This week’s civil notion-- “V” is for Vitriol, When It Should Be for Victory

Dan Levitan argues in the New Republic that Republican deniers of climate change, who are now on the side of the “angels,” don’t deserve redemption by Democrats unless they own-up to the harms they’ve caused by their earlier denials. Prompting Levitan to write his article was the testimony of Republican pollster Frank Luntz before the Senate Democrats’ Special Committee on the Climate Crisis.

Luntz’s invitation was issued by the chair of the Committee, Senator Brian Schatz (D-HI). Unlike the House Select Committee on the Climate Crisis, the group is not a Senate sanctioned organization. It is a group of Democratic senators wanting to examine how climate change is affecting the country and the planet and to mobilize action and support for bold climate solutions. The Committee will convene a series of hearings through 2019 and 2020 to gather expert testimony from a wide variety of witnesses.

The July 25th hearing was entitled “The Right Thing to Do: Conservatives for Climate Action.” Joining Luntz as witnesses were Kera O’Brien Vice President, Students for Carbon Dividends and Nick Huey, founder of the Climate Campaign and a member of the Utah Chapter of the Citizens’ Climate Lobby. Both O’Brien and Huey are young conservative Republicans who believe that carbon needs to be priced.

                                           Climate Politics/Capitol Light© is a service of The JBS Group and Civil Notion.com

Volume 1                                                                          May 28, 2019                                                             Issue 3
 
Both the House and Senate are out on scheduled district workdays and will not return until June 4, 2019.

Who’ll sweep the forest floors now? The Trump administration announced on May 24th it will be killing a Forest Service program that trains disadvantaged young people for wildland fire fighting and other jobs in rural communities, laying off 1,100 employees — believed to be the largest number of federal job cuts in a decade.

The Job Corps Civilian Conservation Centers enroll more than 3,000 students a year in rural America. The soon-to-close centers — in Montana, Wisconsin, Arkansas, Virginia, Washington state, Kentucky, North Carolina, and Oregon — include hundreds of jobs in some of President Trump’s political strongholds. In Congress, members of both parties objected to the plan.

The drawdown of the program, starting in September, will result in the largest layoffs of civil servants since the military’s base realignment and closures of 2010 and 2011, federal personnel experts said. Nine of the centers will close, and another 16 will be taken over by private companies and possibly states.

The announced killing of the program shows once again that Trump and his administration seem at times to have nothing in common with each other. Wasn’t it Trump who has vowed to help rural residents find new well-paying job opportunities? Moreover, wasn’t it the same Donald who trumped up a story about the cleanliness of Finland’s forest floors being the reason forest fires are not a problem there?