US President Barack Obama suffered a double-barreled setback in Congress on Thursday when members of his own party moved to apply the brakes to his top legislative priorities, healthcare and climate change.
Obama has demanded urgent and simultaneous attention to overhauling healthcare and addressing climate change, saying both were necessary to boost the US economy, which is in a deep recession.
He has demanded that Congress send him a bill by October to cut healthcare costs and provide medical coverage to most of the 46 million uninsured Americans. The president wants climate change legislation before year’s end.
PHOTO: EPA
While Obama was in Italy on Thursday encouraging world leaders to intensify the fight against global warming, legislation to cut US emissions of greenhouse gases suffered a delay in the Senate.
The leading Senate committee responsible for developing the climate change legislation put off for at least a month work on a bill, leaving less time for Congress to fulfill Obama’s desire to enact a law this year.
“We’ll do it as soon as we get back” in September from a month-long break, Senate Environment and Public Works Committee Chairman Barbara Boxer, a Democrat, announced.
Earlier this week, Boxer said her committee had planned to complete work on a bill by early next month.
A White House spokesman, who asked not to be identified, said: “The administration is continuing to work with the Senate to pass comprehensive energy legislation and believes it’s on track.”
The House of Representatives last month passed its version of a bill to cut carbon dioxide emissions from 2005 levels by 17 percent by 2020 and 83 percent by 2050.
The Senate delay came as senators continued to bicker over how to reduce industrial emissions of carbon dioxide without putting US businesses and consumers at a disadvantage.
Congress, which is controlled by the Democrats, also was preoccupied with healthcare reform as lawmakers in both chambers worked on draft proposals to revamp the bureaucratic US healthcare system.
Supporters of the healthcare overhaul are searching for ways to bring down the plan’s price tag of at least US$1 trillion and pay for it without raising taxes on the middle class and poor.
Some of the US Senate’s main players on climate change also are central to the healthcare reform debate in Congress.
The House of Representatives’ healthcare plan faced a possible delay after a group of fiscally conservative Democrats let it be known that they were not happy with the cost and direction of the draft.
The so-called Blue Dog Democrats put their concerns in a letter released after House Speaker Nancy Pelosi reaffirmed that she intends to win House passage by Congress’s August recess of a comprehensive healthcare bill.
In the letter to Pelosi and House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer, the Blue Dog faction said that the House should “pare back some of the cost-drivers to produce a bill that we can afford.”
“Paying for health care reform must start with finding savings within the current delivery system and maximizing the value of our health care dollar before we ask the public to pay more,” the letter said.
The group complained that the House bill failed to reform payments to doctors, hospitals and insurers and lacked provisions to shield small businesses from excessive costs.
Four people jailed in the landmark Hong Kong national security trial of "47 democrats" accused of conspiracy to commit subversion were freed today after more than four years behind bars, the second group to be released in a month. Among those freed was long-time political and LGBTQ activist Jimmy Sham (岑子杰), who also led one of Hong Kong’s largest pro-democracy groups, the Civil Human Rights Front, which disbanded in 2021. "Let me spend some time with my family," Sham said after arriving at his home in the Kowloon district of Jordan. "I don’t know how to plan ahead because, to me, it feels
Poland is set to hold a presidential runoff election today between two candidates offering starkly different visions for the country’s future. The winner would succeed Polish President Andrzej Duda, a conservative who is finishing his second and final term. The outcome would determine whether Poland embraces a nationalist populist trajectory or pivots more fully toward liberal, pro-European policies. An exit poll by Ipsos would be released when polls close today at 9pm local time, with a margin of error of plus or minus 2 percentage points. Final results are expected tomorrow. Whoever wins can be expected to either help or hinder the
North Korea has detained another official over last week’s failed launch of a warship, which damaged the naval destroyer, state media reported yesterday. Pyongyang announced “a serious accident” at Wednesday last week’s launch ceremony, which crushed sections of the bottom of the new destroyer. North Korean leader Kim Jong-un called the mishap a “criminal act caused by absolute carelessness.” Ri Hyong-son, vice department director of the Munitions Industry Department of the Party Central Committee, was summoned and detained on Sunday, the Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) reported. He was “greatly responsible for the occurrence of the serious accident,” it said. Ri is the fourth person
The collapse of the Swiss Birch glacier serves as a chilling warning of the escalating dangers faced by communities worldwide living under the shadow of fragile ice, particularly in Asia, experts said. Footage of the collapse on Wednesday showed a huge cloud of ice and rubble hurtling down the mountainside into the hamlet of Blatten. Swiss Development Cooperation disaster risk reduction adviser Ali Neumann said that while the role of climate change in the case of Blatten “still needs to be investigated,” the wider impacts were clear on the cryosphere — the part of the world covered by frozen water. “Climate change and
RSS