Wind is God’s way of balancing heat. Wind is the way you shift heat from areas where it’s hotter to areas where it’s cooler. That’s what wind is. Wouldn’t it be ironic if in the interest of global warming we mandated massive switches to energy, which is a finite resource, which slows the winds down, which causes the temperature to go up? Now, I’m not saying that’s going to happen, Mr. Chairman, but that is definitely something on the massive scale. I mean, it does make some sense. You stop something, you can’t transfer that heat, and the heat goes up. It’s just something to think about.

This man was once the chairman of the committee, which this year passed the Waxman-Markey climate bill.

Yesterday we learned why Barton, the senior Republican on the House Energy and Commerce Committee who won his last election with a comfortable 62 percent, is rummaging for cash. He wants the Senate seat soon to be vacated by Kay Bailey Hutchison (R-Texas), who’s stepping down in December to run for governor. From the Dallas Morning News:

Barton, a 25-year House veteran who has long harbored Senate ambitions, has not set up a campaign committee, hired staff or created a Web site, unlike Williams and at least three other Republicans and two Democrats. But that doesn’t rule him out as a strong contender in a special election, he said, because “nobody yet has established themselves as a clear front-runner.”

“I’m serious enough to still be thinking about it,” he said.

In case you’ve forgotten who Barton is, he’s the member of the committee that produce the Waxman-Markey climate bill who thinks that, rather than doing something about climate change, humans should just adapt. He also pledged a  “guerrilla war” to torpedo climate legislation and has busied himself during important committee hearings by reading the newspaper.

h/t: The Hill

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The 13-term Barton, who’s the senior Republican on the House Energy and Commerce Committee, won his last election with an easy 62 percent of the vote. Still, these guys can never have enough campaign cash.

The White House says that Sen. Mike Enzi’s (R-Wyo.) comments on health care reform might mean the now famous bipartisan “Gang of Six,” leading the charge on a bill in the Senate Finance Committee, could be down to five.  Judging by this anti-”Obamacare” fundraising appeal, it doesn’t look like Sen. Charles Grassley (R-Iowa) wants to stay in the club, either. That would leave Sen. Olympia Snowe (R-Maine), who the New York Times called “the Group of One,” as the last Republican negotiator in the club. Snowe has signaled she wants to scale back the scope of health care reform.

Former GOP presidential nominee Bob Dole thinks President Obama needs to hit the reset button and produce his own bill.

Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Steele, who had a hard time staying on message last week, doesn’t want Congress to be guilt-tripped into passing health care reform in honor of the issue’s late champion, Sen. Ted Kennedy (D-Mass.) Meanwhile, Rep. Joe Barton (R-Texas) said Republicans will repeal any Democratic reforms if they win back congressional majorities next year. Of course, that’s a very big “if.”

If they somehow manage to get the votes and get enough Democrats to walk the plank and commit political suicide, in the next Congress, I’ll be chairman Joe Barton of the Energy and Commerce committee, and we’ll repeal it.

Of course, even the most optimistic strategists would call it extremely unlikely that Republicans could get a veto-proof majority in 2010, so this is bluster. But it speaks to Republican confidence that blocking any health care reform is a political winner.

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Tuesday’s hearing, the first day at which amendments to the bill were presented, extended late into the night, but just six amendments were put to a vote, and Chairman Henry Waxman’s (D-Calif.) goal of voting on the bill today appeared to be in serious danger. Yet just now, Ranking Member Joe Barton (D-Texas), who had pledged to wreak havoc on the proceedings, said that the Republicans were planning just ten more amendments. The committee now hopes to wrap things up by around 7 p.m. tonight.

What led to the Republican change of heart? Republicans may be disheartened by the fairly unified Democratic front thus far — the moderates they were hoping to pick off on some votes have largely toed the party line as Republican amendment after Republican amendment has been rejected. Or maybe they simply can’t bear the thought of another week of long hearings, when a sense of inevitability surrounding the bill’s passage (in the House, at least) has set in.

Last night, the Republicans forfeited another card they had up their sleeves by agreeing not to force a reading of the 946-page bill. But Barton didn’t want Douglas Wilder, the speed reader the Democrats hired as a precaution to go to waste.

“I may force the reading of a five-page amendment just to hear that young man read,” Barton said.

Waxman responded that he thought the Democratic leadership had let the reader go after the Republican pledge last night not to force a reading. But it was soon discovered that he was present, and Barton requested a reading of an amendment he had just introduced.

And so Wilder set to work, churning out the bureaucratic language atop the amendment at an impressive clip. After about 20 seconds of reading, Barton cut him off and withdrew his request for a reading. Wilder drew a big round of applause from everyone present.

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So the majority party is taking the necessary precautions: it’s hired a speed reader, just in case.

According to The Wall Street Journal, this new assistant can read a page in 34 seconds, and the entire bill would take him about nine hours.

Just another example of the ridiculous parliamentary dance putting your taxpayer dollars to good use.

Ranking member Joe Barton (R-Texas), who promised to wage “sneaky,” “crafty” “guerrilla warfare” on the legislation, just delivered his opening statement. He said of the bill, “We know the cost is significant; we know the environmental benefit is practically nonexistent.”

And so he’s offering a Republican substitute bill, which he said “wouldn’t wreck the economy, would have some economic benefits and wouldn’t do any environmental harm.” If that language seems less than aggressive in combating global climate change, that’s because it is. Says Joe Romm, “You can’t really call it an alternative climate bill, since it doesn’t stop US greenhouse gas emissions from rising and the words “climate change” and “global warming” hardly appear in it at all — except to strip any authority from the EPA to address the problem.”

Barton also pledged to introduce a number of amendments to improve the legislation. In fact, he’s got 450 amendments up his sleeve, and I’ll give you a sense of their general thrust. Numbers 10 to 148 take this form:

• #30: “Suspends the act should more than 1,000 jobs in Indiana be lost due to the implementation of this Act.”
• #31: “Suspends the act should more than 2,000 jobs in Indiana be lost due to the implementation of this Act.”
• #32: “Suspends the act should more than 5,000 jobs in Indiana be lost due to the implementation of this Act.”
• #33: “Suspends the act should more than 10,000 jobs in Indiana be lost due to the implementation of this Act.”
• #34: “Suspends the act should more than 50,000 jobs in Indiana be lost due to the implementation of this Act.”

Swap in the names of 19 other states (no idea why the remaining 30 are excluded), and you get the general idea. You also start to understand Barton’s remark to Politico last week: “This is not going to be one of those gentlemanly, pro forma markups. We’re prepared for it to take weeks or months.”

OK, maybe it won’t be THAT fun to watch. Fortunately, TWI will provide updates and save you the trouble. Stay tuned.

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Barton, the ranking member on the House Energy and Commerce Committee, doesn’t have any illusions about his role in the process; he is well aware that the details of the bill will be hammered out by the committee’s liberal and moderate Democrats. But he does hope to have some fun in the process by helping spark “mass chaos” at next week’s markup, as he told ClimateWire yesterday.

“I’m not the majority, so I’m not going to be the target,” he said. “I’m going to be the sneaky little guy that pops up from behind the bush and fights the guerrilla. But guerrilla warfare does succeed sometimes.” His militant rhetoric echoed that of his colleague Rep. Mike Pence (R-Ind.) last week.

Barton continued: “There are going to be more members who want more allowances than they have allowances to give. So then you make some member mad because he doesn’t get what he thinks is his fair share. And then the crafty Republicans will come in and say we’ve got a deal for you, if you support us, there’s no need for allowances.”

His hope, in other words, is to wreak such havoc upon the negotiations that moderate House Democrats decide to support the nonexistent Republican alternative legislation, which, if written, would almost certainly involve no carbon caps, renewable electricity standards or other measures to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, since Barton does not consider global warming a problem.

Or maybe, after all those boring hearings, he’s just looking to have a little fun.

Everyone, that is, except Rep. Joe Barton (R-Texas). Barton, the ranking member of the Energy and Commerce Committee, is conspicuously reading a newspaper.