Ex-Obama officials rue missed chances on climate action

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In oral histories, senior Democrats recounted how climate legislation took a back seat to President Barack Obama’s signature health care law.

Then-Secretary of Energy Steven Chu and then-President Barack Obama in February 2009. In a newly released interview, Chu said Obama should have used "the power of the presidency" to win lawmakers' votes.

Sebelius, who helped shepherd the landmark health care law into existence, lamented the fact that only one of those legislative efforts worked out. The administration had been successful, she said, in “translating the health side of environment to individuals,” and climate and energy legislation would have contained additional public health benefits.

In 2009, the Democratic-led House passed a cap-and-trade bill led by then-Reps. Henry Waxman and Ed Markey . But efforts in the Senate stalled out. “You could have just said, ‘OK, just take one of the bills. Just take the Bingaman bill’ — because it actually had Republican support — ‘and drop the word “climate” into it and pass it, and let us get to conference and see what we can do.’ But that was a lot to ask of people.”the administration decided to concentrate on health care during Obama’s first year in office, with energy to come the following year.

The list “came from the staff of the White House, because we wanted it to all be close hold and not subject to , for example,” DeParle said. “But we each talked to Cabinet secretaries.”

Source: Healthcare Press (healthcarepress.net)

 

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