Cap This

All the caterwauling I've done this week about cap and trade, and now this:

As President Barack Obama encouraged world leaders meeting in Italy to intensify the fight against global warming, legislation to cut U.S. emissions of greenhouse gases suffered a delay in the Senate on Thursday.

The leading Senate committee responsible for developing the climate change legislation has delayed by at least a month its crafting of a bill, leaving less time for Congress to fulfill Obama's desire to enact a law this year.

So why would you delay something that's URGENT URGENT URGENT as cap and trade? Two reasons, apparently. First is the old Beltway standby, sloth:

"We'll do it as soon as we get back" in September from a month-long break, Senate Environment and Public Works Committee Chairman Barbara Boxer announced.

Emphasis mine. While there's little doubt that our wallets are all safer when Congress is not in session, how many people do you know who take a month-long break? I guess a month-long break is fine as long as you don't spend it in Crawford, Texas. But there's a more important reason:

The Senate delay came as Congress was preoccupied with healthcare reform, Obama's top legislative priority, and as senators continued to bicker over how to reduce industrial emissions of carbon dioxide without putting U.S. businesses and consumers at a disadvantage.

Healthcare reform, in this context, is of course the ongoing effort to replace the current patchwork of private insurance with the all-new shiny government-run healthcare program, which will save skabillions of dollars and will be run effectively and efficiently through the Department of Motor Vehicles.

Now, moving effective control of the economy over to the Beltway is tough work, especially if you're trying to get it done before people notice what's really happening. What I suspect: the Democrats realize that they can't get both national health care and a carbon regulation scheme, especially with people starting to notice that some of the other Change You Can Believe In isn't working so well, so they have to choose. And since taking over healthcare provides more effective control over how people live their lives, that's the smart bet.

August is now a very important month. When the solons come home, it's time to let them know what the consequences of voting for government control will be. While I don't expect that Betty McCollum, Amy Klobuchar or Al Franken care about the views of a mouth-breathing blogger, if enough other like minded people make it clear that there will be consequences for nationalizing vast swathes of the economy, we may be able to stop these horrible ideas. And if that happens, business will start investing again and Obama might even get his economic recovery. Eventually Bill Clinton figured that one out. Let's see if The One is as quick on the uptake as Slick Willy.