Subject: Fw: Heads up
From: "Carol Browner" <[email-masked]>
To: [email-masked]
Date: Fri, 17 Oct 2008 19:55:08 -0400

Chapter two below. Hard to imagine a member saying he "misspoke". 
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----- Original Message -----
From: Heather Zichal <[email-masked]>
To: Carol Browner
Sent: Fri Oct 17 15:40:39 2008
Subject: RE: Heads up

Boucher is calling Greenwire to say that he misspoke. Hopefully we’ll get this turned around pronto. But the fact that he said this to a room full of enviro journalists makes me think this isn’t going to die quietly.  

If anyone asks you, please let them know we are NOT negotiating our position and this story is completely inaccurate.

From: Carol Browner [mailto:[email-masked]] 
Sent: Friday, October 17, 2008 2:31 PM
To: Heather Zichal
Subject: Re: Heads up

Thanks. We are definitely in funny season. Hope you are doing well.
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----- Original Message -----
From: Heather Zichal <[email-masked]>
To: [email-masked] <[email-masked]>; Carol Browner
Sent: Fri Oct 17 15:17:39 2008
Subject: Heads up

This is  ridiculous. We are NOT in talks with key House Members. I’m working to get this story fixed and I’m calling Boucher as well. Wanted to flag for your asap. More to come.

CLIMATE: Obama campaign in talks with key House lawmaker on cap and trade (10/17/2008)

Darren Samuelsohn, Greenwire senior reporter

ROANOKE, Va. -- Advisers to Democratic presidential nominee Barack Obama and a top House Democrat have begun preliminary talks about how to write global warming legislation early next year should the Illinois senator win the White House, the lawmaker, Rep. Rick Boucher of Virginia, said today.

Appearing at the Society of Environmental Journalists' conference here, Boucher predicted he could bridge differences between Obama's campaign platform on climate change and a proposal <http://www.eenews.net/features/documents/2008/10/07/document_gw_04.pdf>  he released earlier this month with House Energy and Commerce Chairman John Dingell (D-Mich.) that would also curb U.S. heat-trapping emissions.

"There is room for discussion and potentially agreement among us on this subject," said Boucher, the chairman of the House Energy and Air Quality Subcommittee.

Boucher and Obama both back the launch of a cap-and-trade program that would reduce midcentury U.S. greenhouse gas emissions by about 80 percent. But they differ on how to distribute what would be hundreds of billions of dollars in emission allowances for about three-quarters of the U.S. economy.

Obama favors a complete auction of the greenhouse gas pollution credits that then would use the new revenue to fund a significant expansion on new energy technologies and wildlife adaptation and to provide refunds to low-income communities that suffer from high energy costs associated with the environmental program. Boucher prefers giving away a bulk of the credits to companies for free, a strategy that he maintains would keep down costs to industry and the broader U.S. economy.

After "some back-and-forth preliminary conversations" with Obama's energy and environmental advisers, Boucher said he thinks the Democratic nominee may be open to movement if elected president.

"I think the changed circumstances in the economy since his positions were initially put forth would perhaps underpin some alterations in that viewpoint," Boucher said. "I'm not suggesting they're making any changes now, but they're indicating a broad willingness to work with us on an acceptable approach that they can endorse and we can also be very comfortable with."

Boucher, a 13-term congressman, endorsed Obama's bid for president earlier this year even though a large majority of Democrats in his southwestern Virginia district supported New York Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton. Obama is scheduled to speak later this afternoon in Roanoke in his push to become the first Democratic presidential candidate to win Virginia since President Lyndon Baines Johnson in 1964.

'We have no choice'

Boucher and Dingell unveiled draft climate legislation earlier this month -- the culmination of two years of hearings and closed-door meetings with many different corners of the policy and science debate.

The 461-page bill would be a starting point for negotiations early next year, and Boucher said a sluggish U.S. economy would not divert lawmakers' attention from climate legislation. "We have no choice," he said, citing as two motivators the expanded scientific evidence on global warming and U.S. EPA's duty to control greenhouse gas emissions under a 2007 Supreme Court precedent.

Taking on one of the most contentious items in the climate debate, Boucher also said he would seek the elimination of state and regional cap-and-trade programs in the Northeast and West once Congress sets up a federal system. That is an unpopular position with other powerful lawmakers engaged on the issue, including House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and Senate Environment and Public Works Chairwoman Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.).

"One of the things we'll do with certainty is pre-empt any kind of state cap-and-trade regime," Boucher said, explaining that the regional programs are there to spark interest among lawmakers. "It is designed as much as anything to leverage Congress into putting controls into place. Once we do so, the need for regional or state-based cap-and-trade programs I think vanishes."

Asked about the timing for action on climate change, Boucher said his House subcommittee planned to focus first on other bills dealing with power plant air pollution, the creation of a new $1 billion fund for the deployment of carbon capture-and-storage technologies and the protection of electric utilities against Internet hackers. Cap-and-trade legislation, he said, would follow.

"It's going to be spring," Boucher said. "We'll have at least one day of legislative hearings, probably a couple, on this draft and then we'll set our minds toward a markup. But I can't really give you a date on which it's going to happen."

Boucher repeatedly has said he wanted to move climate legislation with support from Republicans, but he said today that he won't wait for the GOP next year, considering both presidential nominees' interest in the climate issue and what he expects will be a larger House Democratic majority.

"Circumstances are different," he said. "Even if the minority decides not to participate, this time we're going to move ahead."

Boucher also said he wanted the House to take the lead on climate legislation rather than the Senate, which in the past seven years has held three floor votes on cap-and-trade without reaching the 60-vote threshold to overcome a filibuster. "I guess I'm allowed the prerogative to say this, I think we've done a better job than has the other body," Boucher said.

Eugene Trisko, who represents the United Mine Workers and coal-fired utilities, gave his endorsement to the House-first scenario during the SEJ panel. "We'd prefer to see the House move first, as well," Trisko said. "The Senate has had three strikes so far, and its record speaks for itself."