A bit about Barbara Boxer . . .

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California's Senator Barbara Boxer must have had a high level to patience to have gotten along for the past three years with her Ranking Member, Senator James Inhofe of Oklahoma, on the Environment and Public Works Committee. She is tough but fair, warm and inclusive and scary smart. California's environmental leadership history has shaped her well for this most important time partnering with the Obama administration on its next big push -- energy and climate change legislation.

How long could the leadership of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee paper over their vast differences? Now that it is time to mark up a climate change bill, Republicans on the committee have boycotted the planned meetings. Through their spokesman, Senator George Voinovich (R-Ohio), they announced on Tuesday that they cannot be in the same room with their Democratic colleagues until they get another EPA cost analysis of the bill. That process would take about five weeks.

Chairman Barbara Boxer (D-Calif) did not agree to Voinovich's demands, leaving the committee at an impasse for the moment. Democrats on the committee are in agreement that they all have enough information to mark up a bill. The bill would put a cap on greenhouse gas emissions and set up a market for trading the government issued pollution allowances, the so called "cap and trade" system. Reluctance to wait stems from the fact that this bill will eventually have to be blended with several other climate change bills in the Senate, just like Senator Reid is doing with the health care reform bills right now. And, in the same way, the blended bill would be costed out by the Congressional Budget Office before it comes to the Senate floor. To quote Senator Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.), according to the Congressional Quarterly,

We are very close to a completely accurate estimate. People might say, ‘Why not wait?’ Because as soon as you amend it, you change it again. What are they going to do, wait five weeks to analyze each amendment?

Senator Boxer may go ahead and move the bill through the committee without the Republicans. Committee Ranking Member James Inhofe (R - OK) calls this a "nuclear option." If you remember, this is the same man who has had serious doubts about the very idea of global warming's very existence.

In a related matter, CQ Politics also reports that Carly Fiorina will run against Senator Boxer in 2010. To quote,

Former Hewlett-Packard CEO Carly Fiorina, is expected to formally launch her long-awaited Republian campaign against Democratic Sen. Barbara Boxer sometime this week.

. . . Fiorina is considered the desired nominee by party insiders in California and Washington, D.C. Fiorina is being feted at a Capitol Hill-area fundraiser next month headlined by a list of notable senators, including Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky. Among the others Republican senators listed as hosts of the Nov. 17 event at Bistro Bis are John McCain of Arizona, whom Fiorina served as a top surrogate in the 2008 presidential race, Lindsey Graham of South Carolina and Tom Coburn of Oklahoma. . .

It is probably safe to say that Senator Boxer's Senate seat is pretty safe. It is also safe to say that she will find a way through this morass of Republican obstructionism and report out a good bill that will fit in with other similar legislation that will eventually be passed and signed into law. It just seems destined.

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