Markey to lead powerful energy subcommittee

[bananas]

Source: Boston Glove

WASHINGTON - Representative Edward Markey today will be awarded a key energy and environment leadership post in the House, a move that will make the Malden Democrat one of the most powerful players on Capitol Hill on an issue central to President-elect Obama's first-term agenda.

Markey, a 17-term congressman with a strong record against nuclear power and for more fuel-efficient cars, will be named chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Subcommittee on Energy and the Environment, lawmakers and Democratic leadership staff confirmed to the Globe. Markey already chairs the House Select Committee on Energy Independence and Global Warming, a new panel that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi created in early 2007.

"It's time to create the clean-energy age," Markey said in an interview. "My goal is now to create an energy policy that creates millions of new jobs in the United States," many of them in New England, where high-tech firms can benefit from Obama's proposed Green Jobs initiative, Markey said.

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"In the last Congress, the two people who were in charge of writing global warming legislation in the House of Representatives . . . were big auto and big coal," said Kevin Knobloch, president of the Cambridge-based Union of Concerned Scientists, referring to Dingell's and Boucher's support for their local auto and coal industries. Markey's ascension "is part of an exciting, game-changing leadership in the Congress on climate and energy," Knobloch said.

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Read more: http://www.boston.com/news/nation/articles/2009/01/08/markey_to_lead_powerful_energy_subcommittee/

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From Climate Progress:

http://climateprogress.org/2009/01/08/breaking-markey-to-take-chairmanship-of-new-energy-and-environment-subcommittee/

Breaking: Markey to take chairmanship of new Energy and Environment Subcommittee

<snip>

Markey will remain chair of the Select Committee for Energy Independence and Global Warming. Joe said the other day that he “can’t see the point in keeping the Select committee if Markey switches positions,” but I think that misses something important.

The Energy and Environment Subcommittee has something the Select Committee does not: subpoena power and legislative jurisdiction. It will be the key subcommittee pushing climate/energy legislation through the House.

Conversely, the Select Committee has something the Subcommittee doesn’t: total freedom, an absence of jurisdictional restraints. The climate/energy issue is so big that Markey can hold hearings on national security, jobs, housing, refugees, trade, you name it. Those subjects are outside the E&E Subcommittee’s legislative bailiwick but within the Select Committee’s bully-pulpit bailiwick.

This gives Markey a one-two punch: he can craft and help pass climate/energy legislation through the Subcommittee while using the Select Committee to educate other committee chairs about how the issue affects their jurisdictions. I can’t think of another committee chair who has the same kind of megaphone with which to drum up support for his own legislation, in the House and among the public.

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[Canuckistanian]

1. Well, this sounds promising

And as a member of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, he should smooth a few ruffled feathers about Obama's appointments.

And this looks like an ambitious portfolio.

[blue neen]

2. I like this quote...

"This is the next technological revolution in America," Markey said. "The stars are aligned for great change."