Ag groups unhappy with Senate climate bill

The Senate climate bill is receiving critical reviews from agriculture groups who have powerful friends on Capitol Hill. Groups like The American Farm Bureau and the National Corn Growers Association say one of their biggest problems with the bill is how it addresses carbon offsets, which could be a boon to farmers that switch to farm methods that lower carbon emissions. The ag lobbies say, however, that the Senate bill does not guarantee farm practices would qualify. Rick Krause, a lobbyist at the Farm Bureau, said the Senate bill only encourages that agricultural practices be considered as offsets, whereas the House bill authored by Reps. Henry Waxman (D-Calif.) and Edward Markey (D-Mass.) guarantees they do. The Senate bill “is a step backward from the House bill,” said Krause, whose group also opposed the House measure. Another area of concern is what federal agency should define an offset – the Environmental Protection Agency or the United States Department of Agriculture. The issue held up the House climate bill too. Eventually Waxman and Markey yielded to farm state concerns expressed by House Agriculture Committee Chairman Collin Peterson (D-Minn.) and gave the authority to the USDA. The Senate bill, though, tries to split the difference, giving the president the power to decide which agency will have ultimate authority...read more

The ag groups should be ashamed of themselves. They should oppose this bill on scientific, economic and constitutional grounds, not some bureacratic nitpicking.