In my earlier post noting Nancy Pelosi's apparent emphasis on energy legislation, Tom Veil wrote:
Her focus on energy may just be a sage division of labor. The Senate has, collectively, been pretty clear that it is going to run things on the Health Care side. So Pelosi decides that the House will just go along with whatever compromise the Senate reaches.That frees up Waxman to put his time into climate change, an issue on which the Senate is so sluggish that Lieberman is considered a visionary. The House's hope is that the Senate, seeing that the House is putting more resources into climate change than it could possibly hope to, will sense the urgency and treat the House's climate change bill as an anchor, rather than as something to be watered down and fiddled with.It'll be interesting to see if it plays out like this.
To add to Tom's comments, Waxman's insurgent campaign to wrest the chairmanship of Energy and Commerce from John Dingell was entirely about climate change. Dingell is fine -- good, even! -- on health reform. But energy policy is driving the politics of the House right now. I don't get the sense that that's an intended division of labor. I doubt Pelosi and Reid sat down to divvy things up. But, as Tom perceptively observes, it does seem to be the emerging division of labor.
