Remember the Dirty Air Act? Senator Lisa Murkowski’s attempt to stop the EPA from following the Supreme Court’s ruling that it regulate carbon pollution per the Clean Air Act? It was defeated last month, but that doesn’t mean it’s gone for good. The Murkowski resolution is child’s play compared to what alleged Democrat Jay Rockefeller has in store with S. 3702, highlighted yesterday by the NRDC’s weekly Legislative Watch. The bill is less than 400 words long.

Although “Dirty Air Act” was just a political nickname given to Murkowski’s resolution, Rockefeller’s bill actually mentions the Clean Air Act by name, and would restrict the EPA’s authority to enforce the Act for the next two years. The bill, given the technical-sounding name “Stationary Source Regulations Delay Act,” would forbid the EPA from classifying “carbon dioxide or methane a pollutant subject to regulation under the Clean Air Act… for any source other than a new motor vehicle.” In a previous section, the language is even starker: “the Environmental Protection Agency may not take any action under the Clean Air Act… relating to carbon dioxide or methane.” This bill is clearly a parochial attempt to protect West Virginia's carbon-heavy coal industry.

The coal industry tries to convince Appalachian voters and lawmakers that their economy will need coal forever and always – and Rockefeller has bought it, hook line and sinker. The fact is, however, that over 50% of West Virginia coal mining jobs have disappeared in the last 30 years and nearly 90% in the last 60 – partly due to the discovery of cheaper coal in Wyoming, and partly due to technological advancements ala John Henry. This is a dying industry. Plus, the American Lung Association says that coal causes 550,000 asthma attacks and kills 24,000 Americans each year. What’s more, even when the industry does create Appalachian jobs, it prevents even more jobs from coming into the state by devastating mountains, creeks, hollows, and health rates in nearby towns. Land value plummets and education rates are low since mining is not a job demanding much in the way of higher education. Why should new industries come to a place with low land value and few educated workers? Coal is killing West Virginia, and Jay Rockefeller is its accomplice. 

This is not the only anti-climate bill Rockefeller introduced this month. From the NRDC link above,

Sen. Rockefeller and Sen. Voinovich (R-OH) introduced a bill to promote carbon capture and sequestration (CCS) technologies. The Rockefeller-Voinovich bill would promote full-scale development and deployment of CCS technology by offering tax credits and other incentives to early adopters. It would also promote CCS research, establish a long-term legal and regulatory framework for CCS, and provide $20 billion in incentives over the next decade for early deployment. However, it includes a problematic provision that would provide post-closure liability relief for geologic sequestration projects.

Another problem is, clean coal probably doesn’t exist. Researching is it throwing good money after bad. That said, I wouldn’t mind funding clean coal research if that’s what it takes to get more Senate votes for renewables and carbon pricing – on one condition. The bill should also state that no new coal plants can be constructed until the CCS technology is perfected. That would mean either a) such plants would never be built again, which is more likely, or b) I’m wrong and they can be built clean, in which case mining issues remain but at least the climate part is solved. As far as I know, though, the Rockefeller-Voinovich bill does not contain such a provision.

Similarly, I’d be willing to support a DAA-esque law blocking the EPA and maybe even the states from fighting carbon pollution if and only if Congress simultaneously passed a tough climate law of its own. Even if it was slightly weaker than anything the EPA would do, it would at least be less susceptible to Court challenges. But as with CCS, that’s not what Rockefeller has proposed.

For the record, Rockefeller has recieved $278,300 in campaign donations from the mining industry over the course of his career. I’m not sure which ticks me off more: what he is doing to West Virginia as a proponent of Big Coal, or what he could do to the whole planet by bringing back the Dirty Air Act. It’s a shame the man never learned anything from his late West Virginia colleague Robert Byrd.

On June 10th, we all celebrated the defeat of the Murkowski resolution, which would have gutted the EPA’s ability to regulate carbon dioxide pollution. Why we needed to defeat Murkowski was explained well by NRDC Action Fund Executive Director, Peter Lehner, who wrote the following prior to the vote:

EPA’s proactive lead in greenhouse gas regulation is a critical aspect of the effort to reduce our rampant, destabilizing, and destructive dependence on foreign and offshore oil. While the endangerment finding does not, in itself, prescribe regulations, it provides the legal basis for critical standards: EPA’s proposed CAFE efficiency standard for light-duty vehicles is projected to save over 455 million barrels per year, and an anticipated standard for heavy-duty vehicles will save billions more. Stripping EPA of its authority to implement these protections would increase our nation’s dependence on oil and send hundreds of billions of dollars overseas. We cannot afford this big step backward, especially as we watch more oil gush into the Gulf each day.

In the end, the Senate didn’t take that "big step backward" on June 10th, as the Murkowski resolution failed by a 47-53 vote.   Many of us probably figured that was the end of this issue, and that the Senate would now move on to passing comprehensive, clean energy and climate legislation.  Unfortunately, as is often the case in Washington, DC, it isn’t that simple (let alone logical).

Today, clean air and public health are once again under an assault that constitutes, essentially, "Murkowski Part II."  The Wall Street Journal reported on June 22:

As U.S. Senate lawmakers attempt to determine the fate of energy legislation, an influential Democrat is boosting efforts to suspend a controversial greenhouse-gas rule passed earlier this year by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.

After introducing a bill to impose a two-year halt on the new EPA rule, Sen. Jay Rockefeller, a Democrat from coal-rich West Virginia, is now working to round up supporters for his legislation.

It should go without saying that this is completely unacceptable.  As we all know, the public was outraged at Senator Murkowski’s Big Oil Bailout bill.  They understood that this moved the country backward, not forward, and that it was exactly the wrong way to go given the energy and environmental challenges we face.  Through all our efforts, our phone calls and emails (and blog posts and tweets, etc.), we helped to kill Murkowski Part I.  Now, unfortunately, Sen. Jay Rockefeller is pushing Murkowski Part II, yet there’s far less attention being paid to this effort than to the Murkowski’s EPA Castration Resolution Part I.   People have a lot of other things on their minds, and they thought this fight was over back in June.  But, once they find out that this effort is baaaaack, like a monster in a cheesy horror movie, they are not going to respond positively.  

Of course, why would the public – which overwhelmingly supports taking action to promote clean energy and deal with climate change - ever respond positively to a proposal aimed at throwing away one of our key tools to cut pollution and protect public health?  And why would they respond positively now of all times, as oil continues to spew into the Gulf of Mexico, as record heat waves scorch the United States, and as climate science is strengthened every day that goes by?  Last but not least, why would they support an effort to protect the corporate polluters and not all of us who are being hurt by that pollution?

The bottom line is simple: instead of wasting its time on legislation that will only move the country backwards – towards dirty energy forever - the Senate should be busy passing a bill that moves the country forward towards a bright future of green energy, clean tech jobs, energy security and climate protection.   Once our Senators hear that message loud and clear from all of us, Rockefeller’s Murkowski Part II will be rejected by the Senate, just as Murkowski Part I was before it.

I admit to diarying about this yesterday, where you can find additional background on this potential crisis, but there's more news: Jay Rockefeller has issued a statement saying he'll try his best to save CHIP, the Children's Health Insurance Program, in the final fight between the Senate and House versions of the bill. Harold Myerson of the Washington Post has also written up the controversy.

Rockefeller: Proposal to Repeal CHIP Is 'Harmful'and 'Intolerable'
By Mike Lillis 11/4/09

Sen. Jay Rockefeller (D-W.Va.), who last month salvaged the Children's Health Insurance Program in the Senate's health reform bill, just issued a statement condemning the House legislation for proposing to terminate the program.

"As health reform moves forward, we need to make sure children can keep their CHIP coverage and not be forced into untested private coverage," Rockefeller said.

The Congressional Budget Office has been very clear that replacing CHIP with private health coverage will lead some children to lose their health coverage altogether, which is harmful and intolerable. Health care reform should improve the coverage children have - not take their coverage away.

I have spent my entire career working to protect children and other vulnerable populations, and will keep fighting to protect CHIP as health care reform goes to the Senate floor, and then moves to conference with the House of Representatives. We must do all we can to shield children from harm. Always.

The Post's Harold Meyerson writes that the Senate bill,

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Crossposted from Hillbilly Report.

The Baucus compromise and its released seemed to finally reach the "bi-partisanship" it sought. However, it did it in a way not meant. It seems as if the Republicans it catered to and liberals both hate it equally as much. Jay Rockefeller, long time Senator from a recently red state led the opposition by Democrats quite vocally. However, despite not having a single Republican vote the consensus was that liberals would once again compromise their values in the name of getting something done.

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Senator Jay Rockefeller was excluded from the bipartisan group of Finance Committee members who worked on the bill Chairman Max Baucus unveiled on Wednesday, so he spent part of his summer vacation researching the fake public option favored by some "gang of six" members. He reported on his findings in an open letter to Baucus and ranking member Chuck Grassley. You should click through and read Rockefeller's whole letter, but here are some excerpts:

"First, there has been no significant research into consumer co-ops as a model for the broad expansion of health insurance. What we do know, however, is that this model was tried in the early part of the 20th century and largely failed. As the USDA states in its response letter, `Government support for the cooperative approach to delivering universal health care was reduced during [World War II] and terminated afterward.' This is a dying business model for health insurance. Moving forward with health insurance cooperatives would expose Americans, who are hoping for a better health care system, to a health care model that has already been tried and largely failed in the vast majority of the country.

"Second, there is a lack of consistent data about the total number of consumer health insurance cooperatives in existence today, and there have been no analyses of the impact of existing health insurance cooperatives on consumers.

"Third, all of the consumer health insurance cooperatives identified by the [U.S. Department of Agriculture] and [National Cooperative Business Association] operate and function just like private health insurance companies. Therefore, it is unclear how expanding consumer health insurance cooperatives would actually achieve greater affordability for consumers or bring about greater competition in the private market...

The Congressional Budget Office doesn't expect the co-ops to affect the cost of the Baucus bill:

(The proposed co-ops had very little effect on the estimates of total enrollment in the exchanges or federal costs because, as they are described in the specifications, they seem unlikely to establish a significant market presence in many areas of the country or to noticeably affect federal subsidy payments.)

The failure of co-ops to provide competition in Iowa bears out the CBO's expectations:

In the 1990s, Iowa adopted a law to encourage the development of health care co-ops. One was created, and it died within two years. Although the law is still on the books, the state does not have a co-op now, said Susan E. Voss, the Iowa insurance commissioner.

Wellmark Blue Cross and Blue Shield collects about 70 percent of the premiums paid in the private insurance market in Iowa and South Dakota.

It's past time for President Obama to stop sending out White House staff and cabinet secretaries to signal that Obama might accept cooperatives as an alternative to a public health insurance option.

Here's hoping that even in the absence of presidential leadership, Rockefeller can get strong amendments attached to the Baucus bill or make sure it never gets out of the Senate Finance Committee.

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