Bunning: Cap and trade doesn’t have the votes in the Senate

The climate change bill that passed through the House will find an uphill battle in the Senate, Sen. Jim Bunning (R-Ky.) warned Wednesday.

Bunning, a member of the Committee on Energy and Natural Resources and ranking member of the Finance Subcommittee on Energy, Natural Resources, and Infrastructure, said the Democratic votes weren’t there to pass Waxman-Markey through the Senate.

“Yes,” Bunning said in his weekly conference with Kentucky reporters when asked if the Republicans would be able to stop the climate change bill that narrowly passed the House. “Because there are a lot of Democratic senators that are not for cap and trade as it was proposed in the House of Representatives.”

“That bill was jammed down the House of Representatives’ throats,” he said. “So you know it isn’t a good bill for the overall economies for most of the states.”

44 Democrats defected from leadership on the House vote, but the Senate version of the bill is only in its preliminary legislative stages, and might make concessions to Midwestern and rural centrist Democrats in order to win enough votes to overcome a filibuster.

Senate Republicans, too, have made a point out of predicting with some frequency, too, that climate change and healthcare reform — Democrats’ two top initiatives — won’t make it out of Congress by the self-imposed deadlines.

Listen to the full conference here.