'If we haven’t done the job completely this year, we’ll continue to fight it next year,' Waxman says. Waxman: Dems for climate in 2011

The campaign to pass climate legislation will continue on Capitol Hill in 2011 – if Democrats are still in charge, that is.

That’s the word Tuesday from a top House Democrat who led the charge over the last two years to pass a major cap-and-trade bill.


Energy and Commerce Committee Chairman Henry Waxman won narrow passage of his global warming bill through committee and on the floor during the first six months of the Obama administration in 2009. But the legislation has withered in the Senate ever since, with Republicans and many moderate Democrats balking at a floor vote during an election year.

Republican congressional candidates have pledged to block cap-and-trade legislation next year if they are in the majority. Democrats have been a bit more circumspect about their agenda plans if they can hold on to the House, Senate, or both.

Asked if he’d push climate legislation next year if he’s still in a majority leadership position, Waxman told POLITICO, “If we haven’t done the job completely this year, we’ll continue to fight it next year through the House and the Senate.”

Some of the House Democrats from heavy industrial districts who voted for the Waxman-led climate bill are now under fire on the campaign trail, a point that the congressman from Beverly Hills also bemoaned.

“I think we’ve got to get away form looking at this issue as a partisan issue,” Waxman said. “Unfortunately it has become partisan, as has everything become partisan. Even the Republican voters seem in their minds to identify the [climate] science as somewhat partisan. But I think the issue is becoming more and more serious and people are realizing it, which I hope will increase the pressure on the Congress to take the actions we need to.”

Waxman spoke earlier Tuesday alongside former Rep. Sherwood Boehlert (R-N.Y.) at an event commemorating the 40th anniversary of the Clean Air Act. The two lawmakers had a key role in the 1990 Clean Air Act amendments, which Congress passed with overwhelming majorities after a decade of debate with industry.

“The two things you really need are patience and persistence,” Boehlert, a former chairman of the House Science Committee, said of climate legislation. Boehlert, now a lobbyist with the Accord Group, noted that the 1990 air pollution law garnered the votes of future conservative GOP congressional leaders Newt Gingrich, Dennis Hastert and Joe Barton.

Boehlert said the prospects for climate legislation could improve if Republicans pick up seats in the House and Senate this November because it would force the proposal toward the middle. “I do know this, if we get close together, that provides a unique opportunity for the center to build a coalition to accomplish something and that’s the way were going to get climate change addressed in a meaningful way,” he said.

The former congressman cited as an example of bipartisan success on energy legislation the last major energy law negotiated in 2007 between a Democratic-led Congress and President George W. Bush. That law included the first increase in decades for fuel economy standards. “That didn’t get over the goal line until the first year of my retirement, which sends a message somehow to me,” Boehlert joked.