Congressional Democrats To Shelve Fast-Track Budget Plan For Facing Climate Breakdown

[hatrack]

Capitol Hill Democrats are expected to bypass the fast-track budget process for global warming legislation but plan to keep the option open later this year if they cannot win bipartisan support on one of President Obama's signature agenda items.

White House officials and some Democratic leaders first floated the idea last month of folding cap-and-trade legislation into a budget reconciliation bill because they remain short of the 60 votes needed to break a Senate Republican filibuster on the controversial legislation.

But a collection of moderate House and Senate Democrats and Republicans have pushed back against that approach and persuaded leadership to shelve the strategy -- for now.

"I'll put it this way: It is not included in the budget that I will present to my colleagues," Senate Budget Chairman Kent Conrad (D-N.D.) said yesterday on ABC's "This Week." "I have said for weeks, I don't think it is the right way to write substantive legislation, because if you get into the details -- and we won't do that here -- it just doesn't work very well." Conrad added, "But what they're -- what they're talking about ... is negotiating leverage, sending a signal that it still remains open."

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http://www.ecoearth.info/shared/reader/welcome.aspx?linkid=122213