A Republican senator called accusations that the GOP is owned by the fossil fuel industry “insulting” after a Democratic senator said the party has become the political wing of oil companies.
In a hearing Thursday of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee on the impact of the Supreme Court’s stay of President Obama’s Clean Power Plan, Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse, D-R.I., used his five minutes of allotted time to read quotes from former Sen. John Chafee, R-R.I., from a hearing in 1986.
Whitehouse read many quotes from Chafee warning about what the possible consequences of inaction on climate change could be. Chafee was the chairman of the committee’s Environmental Pollution Subcommittee in 1986 and held a two-day hearing on ozone depletion, the greenhouse effect and climate change.
After spending most of his time channeling Chafee, Whitehouse leveled accusations at Senate Republicans that oil industry money is why the current GOP doesn’t share Chafee’s opinions.
“That was 30 years ago. Of course, all of this predating the Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision, which allowed the fossil fuel industry to affect a virtual hostile takeover of the Republican Party,” Whitehouse said, “rendering that party today the de facto political wing of the fossil fuel industry and producing hearings like today’s.”
While committee Chairman Jim Inhofe, R-Okla., merely thanked Whitehouse for his comments and moved on with the hearing, Sen. Roger Wicker, R-Miss., was not so willing to move on.
Wicker hit back at Whitehouse, saying the Rhode Island senator should show more decorum than to level accusations of corruption at his colleagues during committee hearings.
“It is insulting for a member of this Senate to come in here and to suggest that this hearing, holding this very hearing, somehow suggests the members of the Congress are owned by the fossil fuel industry,” Wicker said, trying to keep his voice measured but clearly angry.
“I resent that and I think it’s beneath my friend from Rhode Island to have done so.”
Wicker said a hearing about the Clean Power Plan, which will cause rate increases in some parts of the country where carbon emission cuts are the steepest, is very proper.
If a regulation is going to cost Americans money, then it is up to their lawmakers to conduct oversight in Congress, Wicker said.
“I resent the implication that somehow this hearing shouldn’t be held at all and it indicates we’re holding on [to the fossil fuel industry],” Wicker said.
The Clean Power Plan is the Obama administration’s signature environmental regulation, which places carbon emissions cut goals on coal-fired power plants. The EPA is being sued by more than half of the states to block the regulation from coming into effect, and the Supreme Court has issued a stay while the legal challenge is heard.
