Facing resistance from members of his own party, US President Barack Obama wants to meet with all 36 Democrats on the House energy committee to reach agreement on climate and energy legislation.
A White House aide said Obama planned to meet with the lawmakers yesterday to discuss two of his key domestic priorities — legislation to cut the emissions linked to global warming by requiring cleaner sources of energy and healthcare reform.
House Energy and Commerce Committee Chairman Henry Waxman and Ed Markey unveiled a draft bill in March that would reduce greenhouse gas emissions in line with a proposal Obama called for in his campaign.
POSTPONED
But the committee has postponed writing the final version of the bill because of concerns raised by moderate Democrats about the cost.
Obama’s budget expects to raise US$650 billion by auctioning off permits to companies that release heat-trapping gases, with the bulk of the money going back to families to help with higher energy prices.
Democrats from coal and industrial states are pushing Waxman and Markey to distribute at least some of those permits for free to ease costs.
IMPACT
Meanwhile, House Republicans were due to hold their own energy summit yesterday to highlight how the Waxman-Markey bill, which they call a national energy tax, will impact middle-class families and small businesses.
Also, a bipartisan group of seven House members yesterday were due to unveil rival energy legislation. Led by Neil Abercrombie, a Hawaii Democrat, and Tim Murphy, a Pennsylvania Republican, the group says their plan will “fuel the American economy rather than fueling partisan debate.”
The Philippines yesterday said its coast guard would acquire 40 fast patrol craft from France, with plans to deploy some of them in disputed areas of the South China Sea. The deal is the “largest so far single purchase” in Manila’s ongoing effort to modernize its coast guard, with deliveries set to start in four years, Philippine Coast Guard Commandant Admiral Ronnie Gil Gavan told a news conference. He declined to provide specifications for the vessels, which Manila said would cost 25.8 billion pesos (US$440 million), to be funded by development aid from the French government. He said some of the vessels would
CARGO PLANE VECTOR: Officials said they believe that attacks involving incendiary devices on planes was the work of Russia’s military intelligence agency the GRU Western security officials suspect Russian intelligence was behind a plot to put incendiary devices in packages on cargo planes headed to North America, including one that caught fire at a courier hub in Germany and another that ignited in a warehouse in England. Poland last month said that it had arrested four people suspected to be linked to a foreign intelligence operation that carried out sabotage and was searching for two others. Lithuania’s prosecutor general Nida Grunskiene on Tuesday said that there were an unspecified number of people detained in several countries, offering no elaboration. The events come as Western officials say
A plane bringing Israeli soccer supporters home from Amsterdam landed at Israel’s Ben Gurion airport on Friday after a night of violence that Israeli and Dutch officials condemned as “anti-Semitic.” Dutch police said 62 arrests were made in connection with the violence, which erupted after a UEFA Europa League soccer tie between Amsterdam club Ajax and Maccabi Tel Aviv. Israeli flag carrier El Al said it was sending six planes to the Netherlands to bring the fans home, after the first flight carrying evacuees landed on Friday afternoon, the Israeli Airports Authority said. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu also ordered
Former US House of Representatives speaker Nancy Pelosi said if US President Joe Biden had ended his re-election bid sooner, the Democratic Party could have held a competitive nominating process to choose his replacement. “Had the president gotten out sooner, there may have been other candidates in the race,” Pelosi said in an interview on Thursday published by the New York Times the next day. “The anticipation was that, if the president were to step aside, that there would be an open primary,” she said. Pelosi said she thought the Democratic candidate, US Vice President Kamala Harris, “would have done
RSS