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What if we had a government, but no one showed up?

In a new twist for the party of No, GOP members of the Senate environment committee have gone from arguing on the merits of legislation to simply not even showing up. Arlen Specter, who sits on the committee now considering historic climate change legislation, said that his former GOP colleagues were acting in a “very, very unfortunate” manner. … We have a practice in the world’s greatest deliberative body of disagreeing without being disagreeable. But you can’t disagree with an empty chair.”

Finally, after sitting around waiting for a while, Senator Voinovich (R-OH), came in to plead with the committee not to hold the hearing. After making his statement, he left. Because the rules hold that at least two members of the minority party must be present to begin markup on a bill, the committee was forced to adjourn without taking any further action.

A similar scene repeated itself Wednesday. This time, Senator James Inhofe (R-OK) showed up with a prepared statement, which he refused to even read into the record or discuss. He also had a testy exchange with none other than Arlen Specter, which I will quote for you here:

Pressed to expand on the GOP position by Sen. Arlen Specter (D-Penn.), Inhofe snapped, “You know, I say to my good friend Sen. Specter, with whom I’ve served for 20 years, I don’t have to answer that question. I have it in writing. That’s exactly what we want. And so I’d —rather than deviate from, that way people might get confused, it’s right in front of you.”

“And what I would like to see us do is to try to be specific as to what it is you’d like to have,” Specter said.

Inhofe would not be moved. “Yes, well, that’s the reason that I did put this in writing, I say to my good friend Sen. Specter,” he said. “Because I was afraid there would be some who weren’t here at that time who didn’t know the past history, and so I wanted to make sure we had it down specifically in writing, so there could be no question as to what we want and what has happened in the past.”

Specter tried one more time. “Well, could the senator from Oklahoma describe it in a general way?” he asked.

“No, it’s right in front of you, you could read it if you like, If you’d like me to — I’m not going to read it you the letter, because I’m going to have to be going,” Inhofe said. “But it’s very specific, it’s right in front of you, and the EPA staff has agreed to this.”

Shortly thereafter, Inhofe took off, leaving the Democrats to debate their amendments. “We’re ready to go,” Boxer said after he left.

Specter may be his good old friend, but even he can’t draw any sense out of these recalcitrant Republicans.

Read more about it here.

November 4, 2009 at 10:34 pm

--Adam Schwartzbaum

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