This is how it’s done, folks. And it’s why I couldn’t be a politician. From today’s Washington Times:
When House Democratic leaders were rounding up votes Friday for the massive climate-change bill, they paid special attention to their colleagues from Ohio who remained stubbornly undecided.
They finally secured the vote of one Ohioan, veteran Democratic Rep. Marcy Kaptur of Toledo, the old-fashioned way. They gave her what she wanted – a new federal power authority, similar to Washington state’s Bonneville Power Administration, stocked with up to $3.5 billion in taxpayer money available for lending to renewable energy and economic development projects in Ohio and other Midwestern states.
House Energy and Commerce Chairman Henry A. Waxman, California Democrat, included the Kaptur project in a 310-page amendment to the legislation unveiled at 3 a.m. Friday, just hours before the bill was to be debated on the House floor. The amendment was packed with other vote-getting provisions, both large and small, that had been sought by dozens of wavering Democrats.
No mystery here. Ohio is a coal state and the coal industry is on Hope ‘n Change’s hit list. So, Rep. Kaptur needed a big old slushie fund to hand out to any amateur claiming he or she was involved in ‘renewable energy’. Rep. Kaptur boasts about her prize on her website.
Just business as usual in Congress. A billion here, a billion there. Pretty soon we’re talking real money.
More information from Ed Morrissey.
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