Senate Democrats Advance Climate Bill Without GOP

Senate Environment and Public Works Committee Chair Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-Calif. presides on Capitol Hill in Washington, Thursday, Nov. 5, 2009, as the committee voted on the climate bill. (AP Photo/Harry Hamburg)

(AP)

Senate Democrats sidestepped a Republican boycott Thursday, pushing a climate bill out of committee in an early step on a long and contentious road to passage. Other committees still must weigh-in on the measure, but the partisan antics early on threatened to cast a pall over the bill — one of President Barack Obama's top priorities — as it makes its way to the Senate floor and as nations prepare to meet in Copenhagen, Denmark, next month to hammer out a new international treaty to slow climate change.

Sen. Barbara Boxer, chairman of the Senate Environment & Public Works Committee, had delayed the crucial vote for days because of a Republican protest over whether the cost of the legislation had been fully examined. But the California Democrat moved quickly to pass the bill Thursday, which for the first time would set mandatory limits on heat-trapping gases, without any of the seven GOP senators on the panel present. The measure cleared the panel on a 11-1 vote.

Boxer said the Republican demand for more analysis was "duplicative and waste of taxpayer dollars." Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid has agreed to do a full analysis on the final version of the legislation.

"Advancing the bill is a necessary step on the road to garnering the 60 votes we need," said Boxer, who introduced the bill along with Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass. in late September. "We are pleased that despite the Republican boycott, we have had the will to move this bill forward."

Former Vice President Al Gore, in town to promote his new global warming book, "Our Choice," said in an interview with The Associated Press that he doubted Boxer's move would have any lingering consequences.

"She clearly made the right decision and because the requested analysis is in fact going to be forthcoming ... it was obviously the right way to go," Gore said.

Gore seemed to lower his expectations for Senate action before the Copenhagen conference, saying that a draft "that reflects consensus support, carrying realistic expectation of 60 votes" would make the chances better than 50-50 that 192 nations could reach a binding agreement.