Reply #2: About Baucus

[karynnj]

I watched the Finance Committee hearing yesterday. I think there is some hope, though not much, for Baucus. The witnesses to the hearing included two that were very obviously against the bill, Thorning and Green.

Baucus very skeptically questioned the testimony of Thorning, who has a model that produces results far different than all other models. He called it the outlier and his face (to me) looked unconvinced. (She very haughtily said that was because her model was a macro economics model and it was dynamic, rather than static. In fact, the difference from Kerry's questions (and her responses) seems to come more from assumed values that were different than those of others. Kerry also brought up the point that there was no attempt to model savings due to greater efficiencies - even though there are many companies where that has been their experience. ( As this is something a dynamic model could include ( probably by making efficiency a function of cost of energy - so efficiency would increase dynamically as cost increases), not including it when the experience Kerry noted exists and because basic economics would suggest that you would do more to control usage as something increases in cost, suggests that she has an agenda.

Baucus had to leave before the end, but it will be interesting to see if he has moved at all since that hearing. I would assume that one thing is sure - it will not have made him more likely to fight the bill.

(The hearing did make me see how weak and provincial the arguments of people like Grassley are and why they will be hard to change. He spoke of jobs, in refining, that would be lost and what they contribute to Iowa. Now, it is true that long term, these refineries may be smaller or gone. To Grassley, this was tangible and what he was hearing when he speaks to people in Iowa. Those people, who are identifiable and who could lose are more visible than the people who will get Green jobs or the cost to Iowa if climate change makes them less ideal for agriculture.)