NEWS
With nuclear caveat, McCain signals support for Senate warming bill
05/12/2008
Darren Samuelsohn, E&E Daily senior reporter
The presumptive Republican presidential nominee said Friday he will support climate change legislation expected on the Senate floor next month.
Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) had said he would withhold his support for the bill from Sens. Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.) and John Warner (R-Va.). until he won assurances that it would more heavily favor nuclear power. But at a campaign stop in New Jersey, McCain said he would accept the outcome of closed-door talks on the bill.
"I’m pleased in negotiations and discussion with Senator Lieberman that there will be a far more important nuclear component of this legislation that’s going to be coming to the floor," McCain told reporters at the Liberty Science Center in Jersey City. "I hope that it will be passed and I hope that the entire Congress will join in supporting it and the president of the United States would sign it."
Aides to Lieberman, Warner and Senate Environment and Public Works Chairwoman Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) continued negotiations through the weekend as they revise the bill expected on the floor early next month. A manager’s package will change S. 2191, legislation the EPW Committee adopted in December that would establish a mandatory cap-and-trade program with about a 70 percent cut by midcentury for heat-trapping emissions compared with 2005 levels.
On the nuclear issue, Boxer did not offer any public comment this weekend on McCain’s statement from the campaign trail.
But it is not hard to see Boxer holding her ground in the talks. Safety, security and research are her three mantras. In 2005, Boxer and four Senate Democrats defected into floor opposition on a climate bill written by McCain and Lieberman that included $600 million in incentives for the construction of three new nuclear power plants (E&E Daily, June 25, 2005.)
"I would view any type of amendment that eased the rules about safety and health in regard to nuclear, I’d view as a poison pill," Boxer told reporters in March. "We can’t give up that kind of protection."
Lieberman’s aides have been trying for several months to make the case the legislation already sends a clear signal for businesses to invest in nuclear power. In February, a Lieberman aide said the bill gives the nuclear industry access to a technology research and development fund projected to grow to $500 billion over more than four decades E&E Daily, Feb. 8).
Lieberman told the Washington Post on Friday he expected McCain to vote for the bill.
Among the Democratic presidential candidates, both Illinois Sen. Barack Obama and New York Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton support incentives for nuclear power. They also have identical campaign pledges to push as president for an even stronger bill when it comes to emission limits and use of a 100 percent auction to distribute emission credits.
Last December, Clinton voted by proxy for the Lieberman-Warner bill during the Environment and Public Works Committee markup. She helped write several amendments proposing changes but her side lost.
Obama’s Senate office issued a statement last week praising Lieberman and Warner "for their leadership in crafting a bipartisan bill that can serve as the foundation for bold legislative action to head off the damaging consequences of climate change."
The Obama statement concluded, "Although Sen. Obama is committed to a more aggressive approach to tackling this problem, he believes the Lieberman-Warner bill is an important first step and looks forward to working with them as their bill moves through Congress."
