Global warming committee may melt away at year’s end

The House’s special committee on global warming is winding down, just as the federal government is gearing up to legislate ways to limit humans’ effect on the climate.

The committee’s authority to hold hearings and issue reports expires at the end of October, and its funding runs out at the end of the year.

{mosads}House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) could seek to renew the committee for next year, but insiders say no decision will be made until after the election.

And she would likely face opposition from Energy and Commerce Committee Chairman John Dingell (D-Mich.), who fought the creation of the committee and has criticized its work. She could also be opposed by House Oversight and Government Reform panel Chairman Henry Waxman (D-Calif.), who helped broker the deal that created the committee.

The letter that outlined the terms of the deal between Dingell, Waxman and Pelosi said “its authority will expire on Oct. 30.” Waxman now says it’s time to honor that commitment and end the global warming committee’s work.

“That’s what the letter said,” Waxman said in a recent interview.

While Waxman was fairly blunt, the future of the committee is a sensitive topic among others involved. Chairman Edward Markey (D-Mass.), in a brief hallway interview, wouldn’t talk about the future of his panel.

He gave a strained grin, said, “You’ll have to talk to the Speaker,” and kept walking.

The top Republican on the panel, Rep. James Sensenbrenner Jr. (Wis.) wasn’t any more talkative.

Sensenbrenner’s spokesman, Terry Lane, asked about the future of the committee, said, “At this point, Mr. Sensenbrenner has no comment on your question,” and noted he expects that to be the case until after the Nov. 4 election.

Pelosi herself has also been ducking the question. Asked in a wide-ranging interview before the August recess whether the committee would exist next year, Pelosi said that was a question to be decided in the process of setting the rules for next session with Rep. Michael Capuano (D-Mass.).

“I haven’t even gone to that place,” Pelosi said. “But I am proud of the work that the committee has done.”

Asked for an update, Pelosi spokesman Drew Hammill said, “The rules for the 111th Congress will be decided after the election.”

Similarly, Capuano declined, through a spokeswoman, to comment on the issue.

Eben Burnham-Snyder, communications director for the committee, said the decision on whether to extend the committee won’t come until after the election.

“That’s a question that will be answered after Election Day,” he said. “We were created and serve at the pleasure of the Speaker. I think people value the service we performed.”

The panel was created amid compromise last year as Democrats took over. Pelosi sought to make global warming her “flagship issue,” but Dingell, the champion of the Detroit automakers, didn’t look like the right standard-bearer for her message.

But when she sought to create a new committee with the more liberal Markey in charge, Dingell fought back to preserve his jurisdiction.

Waxman brokered an agreement between Pelosi and Dingell, and the committee was formed. The committee was allowed to to hold hearings and write reports, but couldn’t send any bills to the floor. The resolution passed in the House that actually created the committee gave it an extra day, to Oct. 31, and allotted $3.7 million for the committee’s work. But it added, “The select committee shall cease to exist on Dec. 31, 2008.”

Now it appears that no matter what happens in the election, there will be more appetite for climate change regulation. Both presidential candidates support a more aggressive effort to rein in the causes, and an expanded Democratic majority would be even more likely to pass something.

Some Democrats say the committee could continue because Dingell’s Energy and Commerce Committee will have its hands full handling the top Democratic priority of healthcare, which has also always been a top priority of Dingell’s. The idea would be that if a new administration, particularly a new Democratic administration, wants to have a new policy to bring to the United Nations Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen, Denmark, in November 2009, it could take a separate committee to get the work done.

But Dingell spokeswoman Jodi Seth says the Michigan lawmaker doesn’t need the help.

“This has always been an active committee and John Dingell has proven time and again that he can walk and chew gum at the same time,” Seth said.

She added that the committee has done considerable work on climate change even while the global warming committee (formally the Select Committee on Energy Independence and Global Warming) was doing its work, including the release last week of a discussion draft on climate change legislation.

For their part, global warming committee staffers say that Markey had considerable input into that draft, informed by the work of the global warming committee.

Frank Maisano, an energy lobbyist who watched Markey’s hearings closely, said Dingell effectively rendered Markey’s committee irrelevant a long time ago.

“They set up a check on him [Dingell],” Maisano said, “and Dingell ran out in front of them.”