Breaking news out of Washington: Rep. John Dingell, the Michigan congressman who has used his position as chairman of the Energy and Commerce Committee to protect Detroit's automakers from serious environmental mandates, has lost his bid to continue leading the panel.
House Democrats today chose to install Henry Waxman of California at the committee's helm. Politico puts it into context: "The ascension of Waxman, a wily environmentalist, recasts a committee that Dingell has chaired since 1981 with an eye toward protecting the domestic auto industry in his native Michigan. The Energy and Commerce Committee has principal jurisdiction over many of President-elect Barack Obama's top legislative priorities, including energy, the environment and health care."
More from the New York Times: "Mr. Waxman, who has been the chairman of the Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, was backed by many environmentalists for his stands on clean air and global warming, and he has a long record of leadership on health care issues. ... Mr. Waxman is generally regarded as more liberal than Mr. Dingell, and has sponsored tougher global warming legislation. Mr. Dingell's backers argued, unsuccessfully, that he was more likely to knit together a broad coalition of labor, industry and environmentalists in fashioning a climate change bill."
The Detroit News said, "The ouster of Dingell, the longest serving member in the House, was seen as a victory for House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. While she publicly remained neutral in the Dingell-Waxman battle, many lawmakers and congressional watchers argued she privately wanted Waxman, a fellow liberal from California to win." The Free Press noted, "U.S. Rep. Bart Stupak, a Menominee Democrat and one of Dingell's closest lieutenants on the committee, was asked what message the vote by the Democratic caucus to replace Dingell sent to the automotive industry. 'Not a good one,' he said, adding the Dingell 'took it better than most of us.'"
Stay tuned for more analysis.
Senate panel to kick off climate hearings on Tuesday
Comments View as Flat
tommybasil Posted 2:30 am
20 Nov 2008
Dems. Have Declared War on Rust Belt
Permalink
randino Posted 3:13 am
20 Nov 2008
Road Kill
The auto industry and its friends have been living in a dream world where all the calendars read 1960. They have fought tooth and nail any safety legislation, any fuel economy standards,and any environmental and climate legislation for over 40 years. Whenever anyone has proposed any changes to their 1960 version of business as usual, they have told us that they can't do it, because it will drive them out of business. The American automobile industry always tells us what it can't do. It never tells us what it can do. If they really get desperate they take their employees and their communities hostage. "Do as we say, or the little guy gets it!"
You can respond to change in two ways. You can buy into it, or you can get run down by it. The auto industry and people like Dingel chose to stand in its way. They are road kill.
Randy Cunningham
Cleveland, OH
Randy Cunningham
Permalink
Bill Hewitt Posted 4:02 am
20 Nov 2008
BIG Step Forward on Climate Change and Energy
As the quote from Politico notes, this "recasts" the committee. It means, in a word, that the committee will no longer cater to the extractive industries, the utilities nor Detroit. As far as jobs go (see the first comment above), strong progressive energy legislation means more jobs! One analysis after another shows this.
Further, the vote today for Waxman means the majority of House Dems want to make energy efficiency and renewables top priorities. The majority - and this very much includes Nancy Pelosi - are dead serious about making strong climate change legislation a reality. I think there will be even more support for Waxman and this agenda than the vote indicates. I think, frankly, that any number of members who voted for Dingell will be glad at the end of the day. Like all those flying monkeys when Dorothy killed the witch.
I've written about this at my blog for the FPA on climate change. http://climatechange.foreignpolicyblogs.com/
Permalink
David Roberts Posted 4:17 am
20 Nov 2008
tommybasil,
I'm curious, what do you think Dingell's chairmanship has done for the rust belt? Whatever he's been doing, it doesn't seem to have worked very well.
grist.org
Permalink
Sean Casten Posted 4:51 am
20 Nov 2008
Careful bashing, folks
Dingell certainly looked after his constituency in the automotive sector, and while we may not like the decisions he made in that capacity, it hardly seems fair to bash someone for looking after the interests of those in their home district.
That said, in the dealings I've had with his office I have found him to be exceptionally bright, engaged and a force for getting good things done in the non-transportation energy/environmental sector which - lest we forget - is the overwhelming majority of our fossil fuel use and GHG emissions. (To take one specific, Subtitle E of the 2007 EISA would not have happened but for Dingell.)
I have no personal experience with Waxman, so can't say whether this is a step up or down. But no one is universally good or bad, and the environmental community - even though they might not know it - did lose an ally on a lot of issues near and dear to our hearts. I'll concede that Waxman is almost certainly more likely to push for fuel economy & other transportation related issues than Dingell. Whether he pushes for electric sector modernization and is as saavy about how to get things done in DC has Dingell has been remains to be seen.
Permalink
amazingdrx Posted 5:33 am
20 Nov 2008
Let this be a warning
To quote Merle Haggard, "When your running down my country man, you're walking on the fightin' side of me."
Watch out auto execs and board members, you who Dingell served, you could be next to get the axe. Your crowd insisted on continuing to build gas guzzlers, which in turn made gas prices soar, which in turn started a recession, which in turn lead to home foreclosures due to high energy costs and lost jobs.
Ultimately it was the oil schock that caused the recession, the mortgage/credit crash would have been over by now without it.
Throw these bums out! Why continue to let them use taxpayer and shareholder money to support their know-nothing, do-nothing industrial regime.
http://amazngdrx.blogharbor.com/blog John Schneider, Northern Wisconsin
Permalink
Bob Wallace Posted 7:18 am
20 Nov 2008
Zero for four....
------------
- waxman is not part of the change montra set by obama, waxman has been in congress for 30 years.
- the democrats will lose the majority two years from now, the rust belt is not a guarentee for them.
- waxman will put standards on industry that will result in thousands of jobs lost, and there is nothing progressive about that.
- this is classism, when DC bailed out wall street(white colar), no one blinked an eye. But DC has declared war on detroit (blue colar) and everyone thinks it is progrssive.
-------------- Obama's goal is to work with as many people as possible to fix our problems. He does not have a "purity test", but a pragmatic attitude. Waxman is a big improvement over Dingle. (Fill in your fantasy name here) was not elected to the House during the last election and Waxman was seen to be the best choice available.
- There is no guarantee that Democrats will win or lose in the next election. That will depend on how well they do during the next year and a half vs. how well the Republicans do in reinventing themselves.
- Decisions will have to be made that will result in labor shifting from one sector to another. The end result might be for fewer people to be occupied in making cars and digging coal and more people occupied in making and installing wind generation. My guess is that people working in the car industry will find themselves making different types of vehicles as we move to more efficient models.
- Lots and lots of people not only blinked when banks got bailed out. They screamed loudly. But in the end they accepted the fact that we need a viable credit market or our economy will just not function.
Union blue collar workers may get hurt in what's coming to Detroit. They already have to the extent that new hires won't receive the same benefits as traditionally has occurred.That's too bad. But that's the reality of operating in a global market. One set of car manufacturers can't survive while paying their workers $70 per hour (including benefits) while other manufacturers pay $35 per hour.
We are in a global economy. There was no way to avoid joining. There is no going back.
Permalink