Senator Barbara Boxer Pushes Climate Bill as Carly Fiorina Gets Ready to Run Against Her in 2010

This climate bill, a job killer for California, will NOT make Senator Barbara Boxer more popular back home.

Senate Environment and Public Works committee chairwoman Barbara Boxer (D-Ca.) said that she plans to mark-up her climate bill on Tuesday, moving forward despite Republican concerns about the pace of the legislation.

“There objections don’t pass the smell test,” she said. “It seems to me they just want to delay this and delay it, so we don’t make progress on this crucial issue.”

All the Republicans on the committee are expected to vote against the legislation.

Nevertheless, Republicans have said that they would like more time to review the chairman’s mark up, and to see a Congressional Budget Office score for the bill and a more throughout analysis by the Environmental Protection Agency before a vote by the committee.

“Why are we trying to jam down this legislation now?” asked Ohio Republican Sen. George Voinovich. “Wouldn’t it be smarter to take our time and do it right like we didn’t last year.”

But, Boxer is a left-wing climate change nutter who has NOT had a serious electoral challenge in decades.

Carly Fiorina who will most probably launch her 2010 campaign against Boxer next week must be licking her chops to bash Boxer over the economy and the loss of California jobs during her tenure as California’s junior Senator.

Stay tuned…

Update:

And, the debate in the Senate with Senator Boxer and this bill is getting ugly.

This time there isn’t even a glimmer of bipartisanship on Boxer’s Environment and Public Works Committee. She told a group of California reporters the day before the hearings started that she didn’t expect any Republicans to vote to send the climate change bill to the Senate floor. Committee debate is scheduled to start on Tuesday.

The 800-page bill calls for a 20 percent reduction in greenhouse gas emissions over 2005 levels by 2020. It uses the so-called cap and trade method of achieving this. Under such a plan, those sectors covered by the bill would either have to curb carbon emissions or buy credits from entities that have reduced emissions more than required.

Critics call this a “cap and tax” bill, saying it would wreak havoc on the manufacturing sector and cost consumers money.