Confirmed: No Subpoena Power, No Legislative Jurisdiction For Climate Cmte - It's 2007 Once More

[hatrack]

EDIT

The rules for the 2019 select committee were taken almost word-for-word from the 2007 select committee. “The select committee shall not have legislative jurisdiction and shall have no authority to take legislative action on any bill or resolution,” the rules for both select committees state.

The creation of a select climate committee was included in a rules package adopted on Thursday in a vote by House members. While almost identical, there will, however, be one major difference between the 2007 and 2019 select climate committees.

Unlike the House Select Committee on Energy Independence and Global Warming chaired by then-Rep. Ed Markey (D-MA) between 2007 and 2011, the new climate committee, to be chaired Rep. Kathy Castor (D-FL), will not have subpoena power. Under the previous incarnation of the select committee, the subpoena power was used at least once in 2008 to force the Environmental Protection Agency under former President George W. Bush to disclose its progress in crafting climate change rules for automobiles.

Without subpoena power, the panel will have trouble developing the most robust legislation or recommendations to fight climate change, according to supporters of the Green New Deal.

EDIT

https://thinkprogress.org/new-house-climate-committee-resembles-2007-panel-despite-12-years-worth-of-new-climate-science-fefbc29628ff/

[beachbum bob]

1. we have more issues right now to contend with as a president is trying to be a tyrant

[Magoo48]

4. I respectfully disagree.

There is nothing on this planet more important than environmental degradation and climate change. In its ominous shadow, everything else is hazy and unintelligible. Until humanity realizes that everything under discussion must, from here on out, be viewed and considered from the point of view of reconstructing our common living conditions, we are wasting time on matters whose failure is a forgone conclusion in the chaos which certainly lies ahead. Think I’m Crying wolf? Research what scientists are saying. I would suggest that approaching all “issues right now to contend with” with the immediacy provided by a clear, honest view of our common welfare would provide a powerful engine to drive those issues forward.

[Sienna86]

2. Climate change should be a priority.

There are many, I know, but this will affect all of us.

[tetedur]

3. If the government was really concerned with protecting the American people

there would be an all-hands-on-deck alarm about getting some legislative action on climate change.

Maybe next would be gun control legislation.

Maybe next would be medical care for opioid addictions.

Maybe next would be road and highway infrastructure improvement.

[BumRushDaShow]

5. Here is the issue -

In 2007, an internal war broke out between Speaker Pelosi and John Dingell regarding jurisdiction of the subject matter because in general, it comes under the House Energy and Commerce committee (that does a TON of things) and he was to be Chair of that. A compromise was worked out then and I expect that now 12 years later, they are trying to head off a similar brouhaha by enacting a similar structure.

I believe (based on their website) that Frank Pallone will be Chair of Energy and Commerce and although he is probably not as formidable as a Dingell or a Waxman in terms of mastering a media presence (at least yet), he is very much a senior member, having been in Congress for 30 years, and could start ruffling feathers from within if he wanted to. As yet, I haven't heard his name mentioned much if at all on this issue. And perhaps that is good because we don't need any distractions when there is so much work to be done after 8 years of destruction by the GOP in the House.

I would think that whatever this sub-Committee develops, it will be brought up to the full House Energy and Commerce Committee for further action, including any necessary additional hearings, subpoenas, legislation crafting/markup, and final votes to send the legislation to the House floor.

NONE of this means that there is no priority for the subject. But what it actually does is free Energy and Commerce (which also covers things like Food Safety) for other priorities and provides a sub-committee that can focus solely on this, by researching and gathering as much information as possible on the ongoing climate crises... And if any material cannot be gained by simple requests, the standing Committee can execute the subpoenas from its perch at the parent level.

[Autumn]

6. That's kind of bullshit. With Trump and the shit his EPA has pulled

subpoena power should have been a given.

[CentralMass]

7. I state the obvious but we are no longer a democracy, we are an Ogliarchy.

I'm on my phone (as always) and will only grab a snippet from this article

http://en.granma.cu/mundo/2018-04-04/the-united-states-is-an-oligarchy-not-a-democracy

"But the data has been in existence for some time. A study carried out in 2014 by Martin Gilens, of Princeton University, and Benjamin I. Page, of Northwestern University, demonstrated that elites always fare better than the middle class in political decision-making.

After checking thousands of legislative bills and public opinion surveys of recent decades, Gilens and Page found that any policy change with little support from the upper class has about a one in five chance of becoming law, while those backed by the elites triumph in about half of occasions, even when they go against majority opinion.

The academics noted, “When a majority of citizens disagrees with economic elites or with organized interests, they generally lose. Moreover, because of the strong status quo bias built into the U.S. political system, even when fairly large majorities of Americans favor policy change, they generally do not get it.”

This reality explains the difficulties the movement of young people in favor of gun control currently faces to obtain the support of legislators, who receive millions of dollars from the National Rifle Association and other conservative groups that consider carrying a rifle a symbol of the American way of life."


https://www.thestreet.com/politics/what-is-an-oligarchy-14671881

https://www.thebalance.com/what-is-an-oligarchy-pros-cons-examples-3305591

In this last election we saw a global ogliarchy buy and influence our election.
We have the domestic variety like Adeleson and the Koch's and their media empire run by scumbags like Rupert Murdoch and Russian and Saudi billionaires buying and owning our government.