So Close and Yet…

It has taken nearly all of House Energy and Commerce Committee Chairman Henry Waxman's energies and patience the last five months to finally get to the point this week where he thinks he has enough support from conservative Dems on his own committee to pass sweeping climate change legislation. Enter Colin Peterson, the chairman of the House Agriculture Committee, who is claiming jurisdiction over the bill and demanding his own markup. Peterson is unhappy with several parts of the bill from the creation of a carbon derivatives market (“Um, credit default swaps?” he told reporters in the Speakers Lobby today), to provisions that he says will destroy the ethanol markets to the carbon credit allocations which he says will unfairly impact rural consumers. 

And it looks like Peterson is going to get his whack at the bill. Though leadership had sought to protect the measure from changes that could provoke more enemies than friends, it looks like the legislation will now be marked up in several committees. “I think the bill will be referred to [the Agriculture] Committee, it'll be referred to Ways and Means, I think International Relations,” Waxman said Thursday. “There are number of committees that have peripheral jurisdictions and that's the way the legislative process works. We'll have to talk through what changes are going to be made.”

In all there are eight committees that have jurisdiction over the bill. Some don't expect a big fight: Ways & Means always planned a mark up, though the chairman of that committee, Charlie Rangel, has previously said he didn't envision many changes from Waxman's version. Not so with Agriculture. And satisfying Peterson, who says he has 45 Dems who will vote with him, is essential to getting the bill to the House floor. Now the challenge will be which committees go first and figuring out what the final bill will look like will be the equivalent to playing three-dimensional chess. The multiple mark ups throw a wrench in the leadership's hopes for a fast tracked bill through the House. But, as Peterson noted, his committee is hardly the largest hurdle. “These enivros come out of the urban areas and create this urban dominated bill – this stuff is going no place in the Senate” where rural areas have much more powerful representation than in the House, Peterson said. “That's something that no one ever talks about. They can do whatever they want in the House but I'll guarantee you it won't pass the Senate.”