Congressional
Climate Bill Tracking
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Video Of The Day
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Paul Ryan holding Wis. town meetings
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Greetings!
Please enjoy today's issue of the Congressional Climate newsletter, brought to you by Lobbyit.com!
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Today's Hill Action:
THE SENATE:
No meeting scheduled for today.
SENATE COMMITTEES:
No meetings scheduled for today.
No meeting scheduled for today.
HOUSE COMMITTEES:
No meetings scheduled for today.
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Obama challenges Republicans on oil subsidies
Seizing upon comments made this week by House Speaker John Boehner that Congress should "be looking into" quelling subsidies for oil and gas companies, President Obama sent a letter to House and Senate leaders urging them to pass his proposal to end tax credits for oil companies and transfer them to other companies that produce energy through other means.
"I am writing to urge you to take immediate action to eliminate unwarranted tax breaks for the oil and gas industry, and to use those dollars to invest in clean energy to reduce our dependence on foreign oil," Obama said in a letter addressed to Boehner, House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell.
In an interview with ABC News this week, Boehner said that oil and gas companies will "pay their fair share in taxes and they should," adding that subsidies for oil companies are "certainly something that we oughta be looking at."
Boehner's spokesman said in reaction to Obama's letter that the president's proposal would do nothing to lower gas prices, suggesting Republicans would not take up the measure.
"The Speaker wants to increase the supply of American energy and reduce our dependence on foreign oil, and he is only interested in reforms that actually lower energy costs and create American jobs," said Boehner spokesman Michael Steel. "Unfortunately, what the President has suggested so far would simply raise taxes and increase the price at the pump."
Daniel Kish, senior vice president for policy at the Institute for Energy Research, an oil industry think tank, said Obama has long supported policies that would increase the price of oil, including limits on oil production in the United States, and is now pointing fingers at the oil companies for high gas prices.
"Now that his plan is bearing expensive fruit Americans don't like, his attempt to shift blame away from his actions is pathetically akin to what we would expect from Hugo Chavez or some other third world populist. His chickens are coming home to roost," Kish said.
In the past, Congress has not shown much interest in Obama's call to transfer the subsidies. The president's budget proposals for the past two years have called for removing the subsidies for oil companies, but the proposals never made it through Congress. The Senate last year defeated a measure shortly after the BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico that would effectively end all tax breaks and subsidies now being targeted by the White House.
Citing last year's vote, Oklahoma Sen. James Inhofe, ranking member of the Senate Committee on Environment, also suggested that Obama's initiative was unlikely obtain the votes needed to pass through Congress.
"My bet is this won't happen," he said.
While in the Senate, even Obama voted for an energy bill in 2005 that extended the 14.6 billion in subsidies and tax breaks for oil and gas companies. The bill passed the Senate 74-26.
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Latino vote broke records in 2010 elections
In a sign of their growing clout at the ballot box, a record 6.7 million Hispanics turned out to vote in last year's midterm congressional elections, according to a study released on Tuesday.
The report by the Pew Hispanic Center found that 6.65 million Hispanics voted in the November 2 midterm elections last year, up from 5.56 million in the midterm elections four years earlier.
The increased turnout reflected the rapid growth of the U.S. Hispanic population, which reached 50.5 million last year according to the 2010 Census, up from 35.3 million tallied a decade earlier.
"As the Hispanic population grows, more Hispanics are in the pool of people who are eligible to vote," the report's author, Mark Hugo Lopez, told Reuters in a telephone interview.
The study -- which drew on data in a supplement of the U.S. Census Bureau's Current Population Survey -- noted that the number of eligible Latino voters jumped to 21.3 million in 2010, up from 13.2 million in the previous census in 2000.
It found that Hispanics also accounted for a larger share of the electorate in the November 2010 elections than in any previous midterm election, with 6.9 percent of all voters, up from 5.8 percent in 2006.
In the 2008 presidential election, Hispanics voted for Democrat Barack Obama by a 2-to-1 margin over his Republican rival John McCain, previous surveys showed.
Obama energized Hispanic voters with a promise of immigration reform granting millions of undocumented workers a path to citizenship, although such legislation failed to emerge when Democrats had majorities in both houses of Congress in 2009-10 and looks even less likely now that Republicans control the House and have trimmed the Democrats' Senate majority.
The current study contained no data on party identification, and held few clues as to Hispanics' likely behavior in the 2012 presidential election -- when Obama will seek reelection to a second term in office -- other than the expectation of a strong turnout.
"One thing that is clear over the last midterm election cycles and also presidential election cycles is that the number of Hispanics eligible to vote has increased," Lopez said.
"That's a demographic change that will continue for the coming decades," he added.
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Although he recently swore off earmarks, the Republican chairman of the House Appropriations Committee Rep. Hal Rogers is still enjoying the fruits of years' worth of pork-barrel spending for his own non-profit "empire" in his home state of Kentucky, according to a report released by ethics watchdog CREW.
The CREW report, released Tuesday, says that Rogers has helped to procure "more than $236 million from the federal government since 2000" for seven Kentucky nonprofits which he helped found. That sum, according to CREW, divides up into $173 million worth of earmarks, and another $62 million of funds that came directly from federal agencies.
According to the CREW report, many of those federal grants came as a result of Rogers' direct intervention. For instance, through a Freedom of Information Act request, the group found that he had arranged a meeting between Small Business Administration officials and a campaign donor who was seeking a an increase of a disaster loan from SBA for a marina that he owned. The man had been turned down twice, but the request was approved after the meeting organized by Rogers.
Rogers has also helped the company where his son works, Senture, get federal contracts.
In response to the report, House Appropriations Committee spokesperson Jennifer Hing issued a statement attacking CREW and defending Congressman Rogers' actions.
"CREW has once again cobbled together half truths and false innuendos to justify wild and untrue accusations. None of this, including this absurd tactic, is new," she said. "In addition, it is not only appropriate, but it is the duty of any Member of Congress to help constituents navigate Washington's vast bureaucracies."
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Until tomorrow,
Lobbyit.com |
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