While climate may change, Washington same

By Jim Roth | Phillips Murrah P.C. | The Journal Record

[ NOVEMBER 9, 2009 - OKLAHOMA CITY, OK ] - If you or I were to skip a week of work, would we get paid?

What if we showed up at the factory door or at a corporate work meeting, and held an impromptu press event blasting a co-worker’s work product we didn’t like and then refuse to go inside and do our part to make it better?

Would we get paid for those antics? Probably not, nor should we.

Yet in Washington, D.C., when U.S. senators skipped last week’s committee meetings for one of the most important issues of our lifetimes, to debate climate change legislation, they did all of the above, except they will still get paid, by you and me, for not doing “our” work.

Is it business as usual? Maybe. But in other business as usual, Detroit has been selling inefficient cars and bogus mortgage lenders ignoring credit risks to make bad loans. Something has to change, or we all suffer the consequences of a system that doesn’t work.

The current salary (2009) for rank-and-file members of the House and Senate is $174,000 per year. That’s $83.65 an hour, not counting their lucrative benefits, if they were to work the typical 2,080 hours in a standard work year. The problem is that neither this Congress, nor any in recorded history, has worked the full work year. But for argument’s sake, we will just assume that hourly wage, in case any of them want to consider refunding us for hours not worked.

And the stakes are much higher than the thousands of dollars in paychecks to Congress. In fact, the stakes are higher than perhaps any other issue before us today. Hence the need to have every “person on deck” working to craft the best policy, the best remedy for the predicament headed our way.

The U.S. Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works began three days of hearings on Oct. 28 on a Senate climate bill to accompany the bill passed by the U.S. House in June, which most every observer knows is a bad bill full of expensive giveaways to dirty coal.

From the beginning of the Senate committee’s work, the committee members and the almost 54 witnesses divided themselves into two camps.

On one side are those who worry about the impacts of climate change on the environment of the United States and our shared planet. They are convinced that limiting greenhouse gas emissions will stimulate economic growth, technological innovation and clean, green job creation, and will be affordable for taxpayers and the government.

On the other side are those who worry about the impacts of curbing greenhouse gas emissions on the overall U.S. economy, which is already hurting. They believe jobs will be lost and America’s prosperity will shrink if GHG emissions are limited, and they fear the entire effort is unnecessary and too expensive.

Note to reader: There really is a third camp that is in denial about climate change, but neither of those three people are scientists and all appear to be paid for their positions.

The idea that there are opposing sides on this major issue should provide every American some comfort if you thought all sides would show up and get to work to craft a better bill. These are huge issues and it’s logical that intelligent minds will differ on details.

But when Republicans staged a boycott of the committee process and instead hid behind press releases and sound bites, America’s chances at crafting a Bill that works for the full Senate, and thereby the whole country and economy, is diminished.

And even though our representative, democratic processes can be messy at times, our country’s resilience has always come thru our ability to solve the world’s toughest problems. That comes through the greatest of American virtues: hard work.

What’s more, the country that truly commits itself to solving this worldwide dilemma will likely have a huge economic advantage if its also leads the world in innovation and development of the solution technologies: clean energy.

I have often heard that “half of life is just showing up.” I hope the other half is getting it right.

Neither of which seems to be the course for certain members of the U.S. Senate today.

Jim Roth, a former Oklahoma corporation commissioner, is an attorney with Phillips Murrah P.C. in Oklahoma City, where his practice focuses on clean, green energy for Oklahoma.