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Proud to Praise 'Em!

Finally, the House has passed a cap-and-trade bill to address climate change: H.R. 2454, the American Clean Energy and Security Act (ACES).

As soon as the bill emerged, GOP leaders somehow thought it wise to play politics with the task of safeguarding our atmosphere. They came up with the polarizing slogan “cap-and-tax” to describe the cap-and-trade bill and launched a public campaign to gin up opposition. The effort made moderate Republicans and Democrats nervous about supporting a bill that was being railed against on talk radio as increasing energy costs.

To win the support of moderate Democrats, the bill’s authors made big concessions—giving away 85 percent of emissions allowances, reducing near-term emissions reduction targets, and allowing increased offsets. They later made more concessions to win over farm state Democrats.

Largely left out of negotiations were moderate Republicans. With their own party leaders politicizing the issue and the Democrats ignoring them, only eight brave Republicans voted for ACES. Hearty thanks to:

CA Mary Bono Mack
DE Mike Castle
IL Mark Kirk
NJ Leonard Lance, Frank LoBiondo, Chris Smith
NY John McHugh
WA Dave Reichert

Now we have a bill headed to the Senate that is both weaker and more partisan than it should be. Getting 60 votes to pass it will not be easy. Still, as imperfect as the process and the product are, ACES is the only viable vehicle to address climate change this year. It is not the bill REP would have written, but it is better than the alternative, which is to do nothing while the problem continues to worsen and gets costlier to fix. (See cover story.)