WASHINGTON--President Barack Obama, weighing in on the Senate's efforts to pass a climate change bill, gathered Republican and Democratic lawmakers on Tuesday to try to jumpstart an overhaul of U.S. energy policy.
Obama called the meeting at the White House with influential senators and members of his cabinet to reinvigorate one of his top domestic and foreign policy priorities, which advisers admit has suffered from the president's focus on healthcare reform.
The House of Representatives passed a bill that would require the United States to reduce its emissions of greenhouse gases by 17 percent by 2020 compared with 2005 levels, roughly the same goal Washington has backed at international talks to combat global warming. But the Senate has not passed a similar measure and a bipartisan group of senators including Democrat John Kerry, Republican Lindsey Graham and independent Joe Lieberman are expected to produce a bill soon.
The trio did not present the outlines of their unfinished bill--they aim to have one by the end of the month--and no concrete breakthroughs happened during the Obama meeting. "We're moving very rapidly," Kerry told reporters, adding there will be a series of meetings on the issue next week.
In his overhaul of U.S. energy policy, Obama wants to reduce dependence on foreign oil, fight global warming and increase the use of renewable sources such as wind and solar, while also building new nuclear power plants. Some Republicans have said they would support less sweeping measures but Graham said there would not be enough Senate votes for a bill that did not include steps to fight climate change.
"There's not 60 votes for energy only," he said of a bill that would focus solely on mandates for renewable power. "Only when you marry up climate change, cleaning up the air, with energy independence will you get the transformational aspects ... that I'm hoping for."
A U.S. law is seen as a key ingredient for an eventual U.N. agreement to follow up on the emissions-capping Kyoto Protocol, which runs out in 2012. The Senate's failure to pass a bill hampered the U.S. position at talks in Copenhagen in December.
