Senator Scott Brown
At 5 pm E.T. yesterday, Massachusetts Senator Scott Brown was sworn in, taking the seat filled by a Kennedy for more than half a century.
The self-prescribed “41st vote against health care” may also have a choice to make on comprehensive clean energy and climate legislation. Which begs the question, just where does the Republican Senator stand.
Almost immediately following Brown’s election, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid made it clear that he still planned to push a clean energy and climate bill to the floor, more recently saying it will happen this spring.
Just a year ago, Brown actually voted for a regional cap-and-trade program, as a state legislator. It wasn’t until he became a candidate that his stance changed.
Back in October, he released this video, stating his opposition to cap-and-trade.
Then guess what happened: the money started rolling in, specifically, as the story says, from tea part front group Freedomworks.
It is just the kind of thing these industry front groups have been doing ever since this debate started, spending hundreds of millions to block clean energy energy climate legislation that would cut off their huge revenue streams.
The question promises to persist until cap-and-trade reaches the floor in the Senate. At that point the new question will be: “which Scott Brown will show up to vote?”
If it is the Scott Brown that pays attention to polls and political leaning, one would think that he would cast a yes vote, since 56 percent of his state says they would love at him more favorably if he votes for a cap-and-trade bill, according to a poll released yesterday.
Maybe things are better than they originally seemed.
