By Jason K. Chen, Carrots & Sticks Project Climate Intern
cross-posted on the Carrots and Sticks Blog

Hearing: Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, International Aspects of Global Climate Change, 11/17/09

Hearing: Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, Environmental Stewardship Policies Related to Offshore Energy Production, 11/19/09

Contrary to my expectations, the senate hearing on environmental stewardship policies related to offshore energy production only had to do with drilling; wind energy was completely left out of the discussion.

The witness panel was quite balanced by the presence of two representatives of oil companies and two representatives of environmental groups, the fifth witness being the Deputy Director of the Mineral Management Service. However, as far as I could tell, the witnesses as well as the senators were convinced of the fact that America still needs to drill. This is understandable because switching from fossil fuels to renewable energy will take time, but the length of time is the question that needs to be asked.

The representatives from the oil companies spent considerable time explaining how oil drilling is high tech and how the United States has the strictest standards when it comes to oil production. The representatives from the environmental groups reminded the senators that drilling is still dangerous and that our knowledge of the effects of drilling on the ocean is very limited. Everyone made their point, but I believe the oil companies came out on top; this was due not to their persuasion power, but to the existing opinions of the senators themselves.

Senator Landrieu of Louisiana was very critical of the environmental groups exaggerating the dangers of oil drilling. John Amos, the president of SkyTruth, tried to show that drilling is still dangerous by pointing out that an oil rig off the coast of Australia just recently had an accident. Senator Landrieu defended oil production by saying that the Australian oil rig’s design did not meet American standards implying that this accident would not have happened off the American coast. I don’t believe this is true. It was stated in the hearing that the cause of the accident was unknown, therefore, what actually did cause it might not necessarily have to do with whatever disqualified it from American standards.

A point that was not discussed was the negative effects of burning oil. Oil as a source of CO2 emissions might have been beyond the scope of that particular hearing, but it is definitely not beyond the scope of the general problem of drilling. In conclusion, I say that just because drilling is safer than ever, does not mean it’s ok.

Today’s question comes from Erika M:

I see yea, nay, no, aye as the way congressmen voted.  What does aye mean?

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Ah parliamentary procedure. There’s no meaningful difference between Yea and Aye, and Nay and No. They both mean “I vote in favor” or “I vote against”. The difference is just a matter of procedure. The Constitution actually requires “Yea” and “Nay” for votes on the passage of bills (Article I Section 7), and so the House and Senate both do that for those particular votes.

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In fact, the Senate uses Yea and Nay for all votes. Good for them for keeping things simple. It’s another story for the House.

There are two peculiarities of the House that make the answer to the question not so simple. First, they use Aye and No for all voice votes, where congressmen just shout out their vote and the chair judges who won just by listening. (Anyone can subsequently demand that the votes be recorded individually, in which case a recorded vote is used. In the Senate, voice votes use Yea and Nay.)

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The second peculiarity of the House is that it operates in two modes of procedure, and that determines which kind of vote is used for recorded votes not on the passage of bills (because those are always Yea and Nay). These final types of votes could be for amendments, motions, etc. The first mode is normal House floor debate, which uses Yea and Nay for recorded votes, so you will see Aye and No for voice votes but Yea and Nay for recorded votes. Yea and Nay are reserved for this mode of debate only. The second mode is when the House operates as if it were a committee made up of everyone, called “The Committee of the Whole on the State of the Union,” and in this mode Aye and No are used for recorded votes as well as voice votes.

Some more details are in House Rules, if you want to pour through the details. It’s in Rules of the House, Rule XX, and House Practice in the section Voting.

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Visitor WB asks:

I understand there are different Bills passed by congress regularly. Some with “H.R.”, “S”, H. Res” and other variations. My questions is this: What are the types of Bills and what does each designations stand for? Where is each Bill valid? Who is subject to that specific Bill? Read it all..

Donny Shaw over at OpenCongress says that House Republicans are explaining their views on the health care bill by linking people directly to the paragraphs in the bills they find important. I think that’s great. They may be using OpenCongress, but we invented that feature over here on GovTrack — OpenCongress is based on GovTrack — so we’ll take some pride and credit too.

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A Clockwork Orange move Here’s what Donny wrote:

Here’s a great example of the kind of textually-informed conversations about bills we have been trying to encourage. Republicans in the House of Representatives are extracting chunks of legislative text from the OpenCongress health care bill page (H.R. 3962), giving their take and opening them up for discussion. They’re using OpenCongress’ bill text permalinking tool to refer people back to the specific lines of text in the 1,990 page bill that they’re talking about.Check it out — House Republicans Read the Bill>>

They’re using a service called Amplify that lets you “clip, share and discuss interesting things you read on the web.” It integrates with Twitter, Facebook and other social networking sites.

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I just set up an account quickly and was able to leave a comment on one of Rep. Lynn Jenkins’ [R, KS-2]

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posts. Then I was able to easily share the post on Twitter Total Recall psp . The whole process is open, transparent and social.

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Having the links back to the exact portion of the bill under discussion make it engaging. It’s easy to be disingenuous about legislation by making a false claim and backing it up with a line of text taken out of context. That’s basically how the “death panel” myth was spread over the summer. But providing a link to the specific line within the bill invites people to look it up for themselves, read it in context and make their own judgement.

Anyways, go check it out

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. They’re putting up several new posts per hour.