‘A Beauty of an Amendment’
“With Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell promising an open debate on the Keystone XL pipeline bill, Senator Bernie Sanders, the maverick Independent from Vermont, has crafted a beauty of an amendment. He plans to offer a “sense of Congress” resolution in the debate asking each senator if he or she agrees with “the opinion of virtually the entire worldwide scientific community” that climate change is a factually proven problem resulting in “devastating problems in the United States and around the world.” If nothing else, the proposal should attract extra attention to the pipeline debate and Republican members’ discomfort in staking an un-hedged position on the global warming issue,” Francis X. Clines wrote today in The New York Times editorial page editor’s blog. Sanders discussed the amendment earlier in the day on The Bill Press Show. “The amendment asks my colleagues, especially the Republicans, to tell the American people whether they believe the scientists who say climate change is real, it is caused by human activity and is already causing devastating problems in our country and around the world,” Sanders said.
