Waxman-Markley Bill Vote Coming Up

Word that the Waxman-Markley climate change bill, also known as American Clean Energy and Security Act of 2009 (ACES), will come up for a vote on the House floor this Friday certainly has made my Tweetdeck and e-mail a lot more full as the cyberspace lobbying effort heats up, so to speak. I won't even attempt to go into all the Tweets about the subject, although a quick search on #ACES should give you an idea of the volume of traffic there. And in the e-mail arena, so far just in the space of an hour this afternoon I've gotten a message from the Pew Center for Climate Change advocating for ACES and one from the Associated General Contractors opposing the bill.

AGC sent out an Issue Alert saying the bill will increase the cost of construction and make U.S. investments in manufacturing and industrial facilities less economically attractive and, by regulating smaller emitters the market for commercial construction could be adversely impacted by these regulatory regimes. AGC cites the American Petroleum Institute critique that the bill would increase the cost of a gallon of gas by an estimated 77 cents over the next ten years through additional refinery costs and that those increased costs would likely crowd out efforts to raise the motor fuels tax to fund infrastructure that could reduce congestion and save fuel. AGC also says the bill adds new and onerous "planning" requirements for states and metropolitan regions that will further slow an already comprehensive and arduous federally-mandated transportation planning process. Finally, AGC says the new requirements would create disincentives to state and local planners to include new highway and bridge capacity in their transportation plans.

Meanwhile, Pew's e-mail contains a letter from its president to members of Congress urging passage, and a link to a webpage that lists and refutes eight myths about ACES, http://www.pewclimate.org/acesa/eight-myths/June2009. I won't go into all of them here, but among the issues that Pew addresses is the claim about the projected per gallon increase in gas, citing an EPA study that ACES would result in only 25 cents per gallon over the next 20 years.

So my e-mail box probably is a micro-microcosm of what must be a fairly intense back-and-forth on ACES that members of Congress are encountering. We'll see what happens on Friday.