Whipping the Climate Change Bill

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Right now the House is voting on the Interior Department appropriations amendments and there’s an amusing game of whack-a-mole happening on the House floor. Dems are using this series of 11 votes to whip the climate change bill (if you watch C-SPAN you can see the Dem leaders working the room). Usually, as we saw this past week, it’s the G.O.P. dragging out the process. But at the top of each vote a Republican has stood up and withdrawn his request for a recorded vote after which a Democrat has requested a full vote so as to give whips more time to get a handle on climate change count. That said, things are “looking good,” said Drew Hammill, a spokesman for Speaker Nancy Pelosi. Hopefully for Pelosi’s sake (and for the sake of my social life — please, Madame Speaker, vote before midnight) final passage will look better than the rule which passed 217-205 with 217 Democrats voting for it, 30 Dems voting against it and all 175 Republicans present voting against it.

In other climate news, the CBO did a deficit score of the updated bill finding that it will bring in an addition $9.14 billion in revenues over the next decade. And, finally, a webstory from me on the state of the negotiations.