Cornyn Watch: Senator Cornhole Lies To His Constituents

I'm shocked, shocked to find a politician engaging in deception.

No, not really. But this seems a particularly tawdry case of it, something from the repertoire of the King and the Duke in The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.

Sen. John "Cornhole" Cornyn, R-Texas, is making energy policy a centerpiece of his bid for a second term in the U.S. Senate, and he's playing a shell game with pending legislation.

Sen. Cornhole sends an e-mail "update" to his constituents, usually at his whim, but lately a lot as he campaigns. In his last two he's been talking about energy policy in mendacious ways, and deliberately confusing two separate Senate bills. This is from his latest opus:

... the majority party in Congress has proposed $6.7 trillion climate tax package that could actually raise gas prices by 147 percent. It defies logic that after blocking the American energy production and oil independence, Congress is now pursuing bigger government, more taxes, and higher energy costs with no guarantee of actually improving the climate.

What one discovers upon further examination is that Sen. Cornhole refers to S. 3036, aka America's Climate Security Act. The sponsors are Sens. Joe Lieberman, I-Conn., and John Warner, R-Va. As liberal as Democrats are reputed to be, I don't think even they are magnanimous enough to include John and Renegade Joe as members of "the majority party."

Going back to Sen. Cornhole's previous e-mail, he lays this alleged Democrat (GOP-ese for the adjective form) tax-spend-and-regulate atrocity on the doorstep of Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-Calif.

Here he goes again:

... earlier this month, the Senate actually considered a massive climate tax bill that headed in the exact opposite direction. This massive $6.7 trillion Rube Goldberg scheme proposed by Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-Calif., would undermine our economy and likely lead to $10 per gallon gasoline. It could well eliminate some 330,000 Texas jobs, sending them to places with limited regulation like China and India.

It's never explained where the figures come from. But I suspect that, as a member of the Senate, Master Cornhole can distinguish one bill from another. What Boxer introduced was S. 2191, a separate bill that takes the measures of S. 3036 a bit deeper into enemy territory. But it doesn't appear to be all that radical. Here's part of an article posted by the U.S. Conference of Mayors:

WASHINGTON, May 22 - The nation's mayors are putting forth their full support behind Senate Environment and Public Works Chairman Barbara Boxer's revised version of the pending Climate Security Act (S.2191), which will enable cities and the country to make systematic reductions nationwide in U.S. greenhouse gas emissions.

"We commend Chairman Barbara Boxer for her leadership and commitment to this issue," said Conference President Trenton Mayor Douglas H. Palmer. "We urge the Senate to pass this crucial piece of legislation that will put us on a path to continue to confront America's climate challenge."

But, let's go back to the Lieberman-Warner bill, S. 3036. I just pulled up Renegade Joe's handy-dandy Web site, and here's what he had to say:

On its own, the America's Climate Security Act (ACSA) is projected to reduce total U.S. greenhouse-gas emissions by as much as 19% below the 2005 level (4% below the 1990 level) in 2020 and by as much as 63% below the 2005 level in 2050. Lieberman and Warner presented their new bill as the core of a new federal program that Congress should pass to avert catastrophic global climate change while enhancing America's energy security.

"With all the irrefutable evidence we now have corroborating that climate change is real, dangerous, and proceeding faster than many scientists predicted, this is the year for Congress to move this critical legislation," said Lieberman. "If we fail to start substantially reducing greenhouse gas emissions in the next couple of years, we risk bequeathing a diminished world to our grandchildren. Insect-borne diseases such as malaria will spike as tropical ecosystems expand; hotter air will exacerbate the pollution that sends children to the hospital with asthma attacks; food insecurity from shifting agricultural zones will spark border wars; and storms and coastal flooding from sea-level rise will cause mortality and dislocation."

"In my 28 years in the Senate, I have focused above all on issues of national security, and I see the problem of global climate change as fitting squarely within that focus," said Warner. "Today we introduced a balanced bill. Senator Lieberman and I found a good, sound, starting point that sends a significant signal that the U.S. is serious about taking a leadership role in reducing its greenhouse gas emissions."

Joining Lieberman and Warner in co-sponsoring ACSA are Senators Norm Coleman (R-MN), Tom Harkin (D-IA), Elizabeth Dole (R-NC), Benjamin Cardin (D-MD), Susan Collins (R-ME) and Amy Klobuchar (D-MN).

A bunch of crazed socialists, no doubt. Anyway, during a lucid moment in which Sen. Cornhole was talking about the actual bill at hand, he's quoted thusly:

“As we move forward with debate over this mammoth new legislation, there are many unanswered questions that Congress should examine closely. The bill appears to implement a $6.7 trillion program that could undermine economic growth, raise energy costs for American consumers and send jobs overseas to countries such as India and China. We need a thoughtful and serious debate on how to be the best stewards of the environment possible. As we do this, I hope Congress pays heed to the law of unintended consequences, including what impact it might have on the budgets of families in Texas and across the country."

It appears that Sen. Cornhole ran across some Adam Smith during his halcyon days at Trinity University. That so-called law of unintended consequences can be framed as an obstructionist argument against damn near anything, when abused.

And speaking of intellectual dishonesty, let's return to the grade-school variety of it: getting the bills straight. Last week, the one that came before the Senate was the Lieberman-Warner incarnation, S. 3036, and here's what happened, according to Votes in Congress Newspaper Syndicate:

Global climate change
Passed, 74-14
Senators voted to begin debate on a bill ... that would establish a cap-and-trade system to sharply reduce the U.S. share of the greenhouse-gas emissions that help cause global warming and climate change. Democratic leaders later shelved the bill in response to Republican delaying tactics, such as compelling clerks to read the entire 490-page bill aloud.

Well, it was noted that Sen. Cornhole was among the 74 senators who voted to begin debate. As for the other 14, I doubt that there was anything unintended about the consequences.

Maybe one of these days Sen. Cornhole will show his constituents the respect to actually distinguish one bill from another. But I don't think the median of American intelligence will ever compel him to do so. Here's an example of the general public, taken from the lead comments on S. 3036 on WashingtonWatch:

Greatdanes
This is OUTRAGEOUS. The Congress must be Stopped and we have to Get Rid of each and every Senator and Congressman. This is SUCIDE for America! Global Warming is a SCAM and Will destroy the Country and make us all Slaves. Americans STAND UP and FIGT BACK. Say NO to this Bill.

Well, it should be no mystery how politicians like Sen. Cornhole manage to have long careers. Against odds, I most profoundly hope that the voters of Texas will see fit to cut this scumbag's career short.

Postscript: It has come to my attention that the Boxer bill, S. 2191, was also voted on last week in one of the goofy ways that the Senate often does. The vote was 48-36 in favor of ending a Republican filibuster against this version, but 60 votes were needed to invoke cloture, so it failed. Cornyn wasn't there for that vote.

Crossposted at Manifesto Joe.