According to Politico-
Energy and Commerce Chairman Henry Waxman may fast-track his controversial climate change bill, bypassing the political hurdles of the subcommittee.
”I’m still holding firm on my deadline to get a bill out of committee by the end of May and I believe that will probably require us to go right to the full committee and bypass the subcommittee,” Waxman told reporters.
Waxman cautioned that "no final decisions" had been made, but he stressed that skipping the subcommittee might be the only way to keep to his deadline.
Waxman’s comments came just hours after the Democrats on the committee met with President Barack Obama in the White House. The president urged the committee to find a compromise on climate and energy legislation that’s been stuck in the subcommittee for weeks. Democrats on the committee said the expedited timeline was necessary to pass a bill out of committee by the Memorial Day recess – a deadline set by Waxman and encouraged by the administration, which wants the committee to be ready to move on to health care reform this summer. “The clocks ticking and we’re out of time,” said Rep. Mike Doyle, (D-Pa, who noted the earliest the committee could mark-up the bill was next week. “It’s already slid back to next week and that leaves you two weeks.” Fast tracking this bill also has some political advantages. The subcommittee is a tougher battleground than the full committee, largely due to its geographically diverse makeup and tighter margin. “You get a couple more margin of error if you’re talking about the votes, assuming no Republicans vote for the bill, but the dynamics are still the same,” said Doyle. Negotiations over the bill have been slowed by a dozen Democrats who want to cushion regional interests like steel factories, oil refiners, and coal plants from major price increases. Although some members of the committee have called for more hearings once the final language of the proposal is written, Waxman indicated that an additional hearing was unlikely. “We did have hearings on the whole framework and we also had extensive testimony on how people would like to see the allocations made, so it isn’t as if we haven’t had the input,” said Waxman.
