With passage of a healthcare reform bill under their belts, congressional Democrats soon may be turning their attention to climate change legislation. But Sen. Jim Inhofe tells Newsmax that they have no chance of passing a cap-and-trade bill.
The Oklahoma legislator — the Ranking Republican on the Environment and Public Works Committee — also says Democrats have been only “temporarily” successful in passing healthcare reform because Republicans will ultimately repeal it.
Sen. Inhofe has been a longtime opponent of cap-and-trade legislation to curb carbon emissions, and he is an outspoken critic of the theory of manmade global warming, which he has called the “greatest hoax ever perpetrated on the American people.”
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Now Democrats appear ready to try to ram through a cap-and-trade bill by reconciliation, a move in Congress that would require only 51 votes rather than the 60 necessary to overcome a Republican filibuster.
They won’t succeed, Inhofe tells Newsmax.TV.
“The Democrats own everything. They’ve got the White House, a large majority in the House and Senate, and between now and November when they lose that majority, I think they’re going to continue to try to roll through anything they can.
“But don’t be too concerned about that because they still would have to get 51 votes. By my count I think they have just barely half that number, maybe 26 votes.
“Some might argue that back when they [were promoting] government-run healthcare, they were able to make their deals and come up with the votes necessary to pass it. Here’s the big difference: We had never voted on that kind of healthcare before in the United States Senate. We have voted on [climate change legislation]. We’ve voted on this five different times going all the way back to [the 1997 Kyoto Treaty to curb greenhouse gas emissions, which has not been ratified by the United States.
“Every time we bring this up again, the American people are more and more aware that this constitutes the largest tax increase in the history of this country, and so they are going to be voting it down.
“The reason I am maybe overly confident that this will be defeated is, every time they say we need to get some Republicans so let’s loosen our restrictions on offshore drilling, they may pick up two or three Republicans. But they’ll lose at least 10 Democrats because 10 Democrats have signed a letter that says that if you loosen the restrictions on offshore drilling we will oppose it.
“On cap and trade, the Senate has voted on it so many times now, and each time they lose more and more support because people are aware that this is just another huge tax increase.”
Inhofe said that in addition to cap-and-trade, there are three other major issues tea party people and other concerned Americans should focus on: government run healthcare — “we temporarily lost that one” — runaway spending, and closing the detention facility at Guantanamo Bay and bringing terrorists to the U.S.
Inhofe believes Republican will regain control of the Senate in November and is “almost positive” they will regain the House.
Inhofe was first elected to the Senate in 1994, when the “Republican Revolution” swept the GOP into control of both houses of Congress due to dissatisfaction with the Democrats. He finds “a very similar political environment” today.
“Our chances I think are better now than they would have been at this time in 1994, because even though people were offended by what Bill Clinton tried to do — Hillary and healthcare and all this stuff the American people didn’t want — it’s the same with Obama except it’s more extreme now.
“I’ve gone so far as to say that every institution that has made American different from other countries, made America great, is under attack.
“People come into my office and they think they’re singled out. If they’re in the energy industry, healthcare industry, insurance industry — it doesn’t matter because he’s after all of them.
“And he was successful, I’ve said temporarily, on healthcare. But almost anything except judicial appointments can be undone or done by an administration, so I think we have our work cut out for us. We need to repeal this stuff and take our country back, with the tea party people by our side.”
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