Kent Conrad Cares More About Helping Obama Than Helping His Constituents

Previously I posted about Obama trying to fast-track some of his policy priorities through Congress, minimizing the debate and scrutiny applied to them, by injecting them into the budget reconciliation process which allows the Senate to pass laws without the full 60 votes necessary to invoke cloture. Obama specifically wants to push through radical new policies such as nationalized health care and a carbon cap and trade system in this manner, which is troubling.
You would think that policies which will drastically change the way each and every one of us lives our lives would be passed with the full scrutiny and deliberation of the Senate and not snuck through with parliamentary tricks.
And this is far from a insubstantial rumor. It appears as though Obama has recruited North Dakota Senator Kent Conrad to this cause. Conrad, head of the Senate Budget Committee, is apparently going to help Obama get away with this even though the policy he’ll be helping to pass might very well bankrupt an industry that is very important to his constituents.

Will the Senate Budget Committee use budget reconciliation for cap-and-trade? It sounds obscure but it’s the trillion dollar question. Committee Chairman Kent Conrad has not sworn off using a process called “reconciliation” to help pass the biggest tax hike in U.S. history, the cap-and-trade energy tax. Reconciliation is part of the budget process that makes it easier to achieve deficit-reduction goals by making changes to taxes and entitlement policy-but it can also be abused to make major policy changes.
Putting cap-and-trade in reconciliation would be a procedural short cut that would allow it to pass in the full Senate without proper debate and with just 50 votes needed instead of the usual 60 votes. On this issue, with 60 votes required, it’s a dog fight. With 50, it’s a relative walk in the park for Harry Reid and his high-tax allies, including President Obama and Speaker Nancy Pelosi. Fortunately, the man most likely to decide the path forward, Kent Conrad, comes from the coal state of North Dakota.
Obama told The San Francisco Chronicle last year: ‘So if somebody wants to build a coal-powered plant, they can; it’s just that it will bankrupt them because they’re going to be charged a huge sum for all that greenhouse gas that’s being emitted.’

Keep in mind that this is much more serious than just the coal industry (which is serious enough in its own right). Roughly 51% of our nations power comes from coal. Coal is the cheapest form of power currently available in our country. If we pass policies that “bankrupt” the coal industry we’ll not only be jacking up operating costs for the very businesses we now want to be focusing on creating jobs we’ll also be killing off a whole industry full of jobs.
And Kent Conrad, who again comes from a coal-rich state, is going to help Obama implement these policies.
Which begs the question. Who does Conrad care about more? His constituents (who mostly voted against Obama), or his friendly relationship with the President?
I don’t know about the rest of you, but the fact that Conrad has a $3.5 million beach house in Delaware (within commuting distance of DC) while his “primary residence” for legal reasons so that he can remain North Dakota’s Senator is a dumpy apartment in a duplex in Bismarck that he never actually stays at answers that question for me.