Just think. A year ago a new day was dawning. Who would have thought then that we had elected a Congress that would give us two more years of Republican governance?
Last Thursday, Democratic leaders Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid said that they would jettison the renewable energy provisions in both the House and Senate versions of the 2007 energy bill in the interest of passing a bill before the Thanksgiving recess begins on November 17.
Republicans have been holding up action on the bill for months now, refusing to participate in conference committee meetings to reconcile the House and Senate versions. The big sticking points for Republicans have been support for renewable energy and ending billions of dollars in subsidies for oil companies. Democrats would like to use the oil subsidy money to support solar and wind power.
Both Pelosi and Reid seem to think that passing anything, no matter how terrible, is better than passing nothing. The third alternative, forcing the Republicans to actually put up or shut up never crosses their minds. As to the refusal of the Republicans to participate in conference committees, since when does that prevent the Democrats from going forward? When the Republicans were in charge they refused to let the Democrats participate on those very same committees, and their legislation just rolled on through. And back in those days it only took 51 votes to get something through the Senate. Nowadays, it takes 60 votes, except when you want to confirm an Attorney General who can’t find his way clear to condemn torture.
In the entire time they were in the minority, the Democrats stopped one thing: the destruction of Social Security. And they wouldn’t have done that if they had not gotten incredible pressure from the grassroots. We all remember that Joe Lieberman was ready to destroy the program, and the rest of them would doubtless have followed but for the heroic efforts of people like Josh Marshall. By contrast, the Republicans have gotten pretty much everything they have wanted since the supposedly lost the election.
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