As expected, Senate Republicans on the Environment and Public Works Committee boycotted a review session on Tuesday, claiming that the 959-page bill crafted by Sens. Barbara Boxer, D-Calif., and John Kerry, D-Mass., was advancing too fast and without diligent review. Sen. George Voinovich, R-Ohio, was quoted by the Los Angeles Times as saying: "I don't recall finding meaningful solutions with incomplete information and stark partisanship."
Republicans made their political stance known shortly before German Chancellor Angela Merkel stood before a joint session of Congress and urged it to "take dramatic action to stop climate change," the newspaper wrote. Merkel told Congress: "We cannot afford missing the objectives in climate protection. The world will look to us, to the Europeans and to the Americans."
Daniel J. Weiss, of the Center for American Progress Action Fund, was quoted as saying: "The Republicans are trying to create paralysis through their demands for analysis. It's a stalling tactic." Wrote the Times: "He argued that most Republicans had opposed the bill before it was introduced and said that only a few, including Voinovich and South Carolina's Lindsey Graham, might be persuaded to support a broader bill."
- Related stories also appeared in New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Nov. 4; Associated Press via the Wall Street Journal, Associated Press via the Washington Post, Nov. 3.