CBO boosts climate bill

Senate backers of a long-shot bid to pass legislation with greenhouse gas caps got some fresh help Wednesday when the Congressional Budget Office reported that one high-profile proposal would help curb the federal deficit by about $19 billion over the next decade.

The CBO analysis of the American Power Act, championed by Sens. John Kerry (D-Mass.) and Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.) found that government revenues would grow by about $751 billion from 2011 to 2020 if the bill became law. By contrast, the legislation would create direct spending of $732 billion over the same 10-year period.

Climate Peacocks

Like deficit peacocks who pretend to be hawkish on budgets but refuse any real solution, climate peacocks are politicians who strut with fine words about science, energy reform, and the environment, but reject solutions to the threat of climate change. "Climate peacocks like to preen and call attention to themselves with flashy moves," Center for American Progress Senior Fellow Joe Romm writes, "but they are not sincerely interested in taking the difficult but necessary steps toward reducing carbon pollution." With the greatest oil disaster in United States history destroying the Gulf of Mexico and the hottest year on record killing Americans with extreme heat waves and freak storms, now would seem to be the time for the Senate to end its allegiance to fossil fuels. Some senators, like James Inhofe (R-OK) and John Barrasso (R-WY), simply deny the threat of man-made global warming and defend the oil and coal companies who fill their campaign coffers. Unlike these true obstructionists, the climate peacocks hypocritically profess to be concerned and say that the Congress should act -- but somehow find fault in any solution offered. "The line from most of these folks is that they want Congress, rather than the [Environmental Protection Agency (EPA)], to take the lead on global warming," the New Republic's Brad Plumer writes. "Trouble is, many of them won't vote for a climate bill, either."