Kim Strassel writes in “The EPA’s Carbon Bomb Fizzles” from today’s Wall Street Journal with typical insight that:
President Obama, having failed to get climate legislation, didn’t want to show up to the Copenhagen climate talks with a big, fat nothing. So the EPA pulled the pin. In doing so, it exploded its own threat.
Far from alarm, the feeling sweeping through many quarters of the Democratic Congress is relief. Voters know cap-and-trade is Washington code for painful new energy taxes. With a recession on, the subject has become poisonous in congressional districts. Blue Dogs and swing-state senators watched in alarm as local Democrats in the recent Virginia and New Jersey elections were pounded on the issue, and lost their seats.
But now? Hurrah! It’s the administration’s problem! No one can say Washington isn’t doing something; the EPA has it under control. The agency’s move gives Congress a further excuse not to act.
I am with her up to the end, at which point I must respectfully disagree. This dispute assumes, however, that congressional Republicans have a pulse. Yes, yes, I know — Kim and I may find ourselves on the same page after all.
Far from relieving congressional Democrats of their cap-and-trade burden, EPA has set the stage for making it worse. That is, any sentient Republican effort to make the most of the 2010 elections should include asking each and every Senate candidate the big question on a prospective Kyoto II ratification vote: “Will you or won’t you?” (By the way, Kyoto II is set to be agreed to in Mexico — even as it exempts Mexico, while exporting U.S. manufacturing jobs to Mexico — a mere week after our November 2010 elections.)
A sensible GOP strategy in 2010 would also press candidates on a vow not unlike those found in the Contract With America: “We promise an up-or-down vote on whether the EPA can do this to you and our economy without Congressional say-so.” A sympathetic if more symbolic effort at doing just this fizzled in an appropriations vote this week, buried amid everything else. But broken out as a discrete pledge — and vote — it seems difficult to believe that this would not result in the Congressional Review Act stopping any EPA rulemaking cold.
That, of course, would also require a change in management. Which is part of the pitch. But, again, I may be assuming too much.