Chad’s Morning Brief: Republicans Fume Over Obama’s Climate Deal with China, Ted Cruz and Obamacare, and Other Top Stories
Here is your Morning Brief for November 13, 2014
Republicans Slam Obama’s Climate Deal
Top Republicans are not happy with President Obama’s climate change agreement with the Chinese and for good reason according to CNN. As is pointed out, Obama’s deal with hurt U.S. jobs and the economy while the Chinese do nothing. What a deal!
Top Congressional Republican leaders quickly criticized the U.S.-China climate change pact to cut carbon emissions that President Barack Obama announced while traveling in Asia.
Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, House Speaker John Boehner and Sen. Jim Inhofe, who is expected to chair the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, slammed the agreement in statements released shortly after the deal was announced Wednesday.
"I read the agreement - requires the Chinese to do nothing at all for 16 years while these carbon emission regulations are creating havoc in my state and other states around the country," McConnell, who hails from the coal state of Kentucky, said on Capitol Hill.
President Barack Obama announced Wednesday with Chinese President Xi Jinping that the U.S. will cut its 2005 level of carbon emissions by 26-28% by 2025 while China committed to creating more energy from zero-emission sources and begin reducing its emissions footprint by 2030.
Boehner called the deal another example of Obama's "job-crushing policies."
"And it is the latest example of the president's crusade against affordable, reliable energy that is already hurting jobs and squeezing middle-class families," Boehner said in a statement Wednesday.
Inhofe criticized the deal as unfair and knocked the Chinese pledge to produce 20% of its energy from zero-emission sources as "hollow and not believeable."
"The United States will be required to more steeply reduce our carbon emissions while China won't have to reduce anything," Inhofe said.
According to exit polls from last week's midterm elections, more than half of voters (57%) considered climate change or global warming a serious problem, compared to 41% who disagreed. Breaking the numbers down by party, 70% of Democrats said it was a serious problem, while only 29% of Republicans felt the same way.
And a CBS News/New York Times poll from September indicated that nearly six in 10 Americans felt that protection of the environment should be given priority, even at the risk of economic growth, while 37% felt that growth should be given priority, even if the environment suffers to some extent.
China overtook the U.S. within the last decade as the world's top polluter following decades of the U.S. as the biggest emitter of greenhouse gases.
You can read the full article by clicking on the link above.
Ted Cruz Alone on Repealing Obamacare?
Is Senator Ted Cruz really all by himself when it comes to repealing Obamacare? That is the way POLITICO makes it sound.
Ted Cruz is still ready to use any means necessary to repeal Obamacare.
But even his fellow conservatives aren’t all jumping on board – a sign that the Republican repeal or bust movement is struggling while Obamacare continues to enroll millions of people with health insurance.
While Cruz wants to use a draconian budget measure to repeal Obamacare with just 51 votes in the Senate, he looks to be increasingly out on a limb. Utah Republican Mike Lee, a leader in the conservative movement, isn’t sold on the so-called budget reconciliation procedure to gut the law. Rand Paul says he’s for repeal but is hedging on exactly how to do it.
Mitch McConnell, who may enjoy a 54 vote Senate Republican majority by January, won’t commit to using the simple majority vote to kill Obamacare. And none of the Republican 2016 presidential candidates are pushing hard for the more radical Senate procedures to repeal the health care law.
Interviews with a wide range of key figures in the Senate and within the conservative movement show that while the party may be united rhetorically on repealing Obamacare, Republicans are surprisingly squishy on exactly how to do it.
The most popular response is to say, “yes, I’m for repeal,” but without saying how. Paul spokesman Brian Darling says the Kentucky senator “is committed one hundred percent to a full repeal,” but added that “using regular order or reconciliation or both is an inside the beltway fight.” And Steve Daines, the newly elected senator from Montana, said through a spokesman only that he “supports fully repealing Obamacare” and “will closely examine how to most effectively achieve that goal.”
And that doesn’t even address the moderates like Maine Republican Susan Collins, or politically vulnerable blue state Republicans who are up for re-election in 2016. Collins just got re-elected, and now her spokesman, Kevin Kelley, says Collins “doesn’t think it’s feasible to outright repeal the entire law” and that Congress should spend its time just trying to fix its worst flaws.
The only sure thing for Republicans at this point is that there will be a vote on a standalone repeal bill, probably early in the year. And even though virtually all Republicans will vote for it, the bill will fall short of a filibuster-proof 60 in the Senate.
The real question is what happens after that. If the Republicans decide to declare all-out war, as Cruz wants, they could set up a simple majority vote on repeal under the budget reconciliation rules. The upside of this move is that it would get to Obama’s desk — and he would veto it, which is exactly what many conservative activists want. The downside, however, is significant: Such a move would quickly dominate the Senate, divide Republicans and become a PR disaster.
Would it really be a PR disaster though? Of course Obama will veto a repeal but does that mean Republicans should just give up? What do you think?
You can read the full article by clicking on the link above.
Other Must Read Links:
These and many more topics coming up on today’s edition of The Chad Hasty Show. Tune in mornings 8:30-11am on News/Talk 790 KFYO, streaming online at kfyo.com, and now on your iPhone and Android device with the radioPup App. All guest interviews can be heard online in our podcast section after the show at kfyo.com.
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