we hope you enjoy the rest of your fourth of july. we will back tomorrow, on the fifth, and every day. guests include stephen rose, author of the book "why america will emerge stronger from the financial crisis." also sam gilston. he will be talking about trade agreements in u.s. exports. we will also be talking to tom fahey, the state house bureau chief. we will be talking about the balanced budget in new hampshire. enjoy the rest of your day. we will see you back here tomorrow. [captioning performed by national captioning institute] [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2010] .

>> part in a meeting last week

on energy and climate change and at that meeting president obama said he would like to see the senate pass legislation that requirrs kns to pay for the right to use greenhouse gases. what does the president need to do to get such a bill passed? >> i think he is doing all he is able to do at this point. i think the meeting this week was a very useful meeting and he encouraged us to work together to try to come up with a bill that could get bipartisan support and could pass the senate. that was his main focus. i do think he said again, as he has many times, that he would like this to be comprehensive legislation. he would like it to deal not only with energy but climate change. but i think he certainly is aware that we have some real disagreements in the senate on what the elements of a bill might be and i think he

understands that political life and writing legislation is a matter of give and take. >> there's been some discussion among members about the possibility of scaling back this bill. in other words, not trying to regulate greenhouse gas emissions across the entire economy but maybe just restricting it to targeting electric utilities. and i'm wondering, could you support such an approach and do you think there's enough support in the senate for such a measure? >> well, i could support such an approach. but i do think when you look at the makeup of the senate today, there are quite a few senators who i think are going to be resistant to anything that could be labeled as cap and trade, anything that could be labeled as gsh -- -- they of course prefer to attack it as cap and tax instead of cap and

trade. but there are clearly good proposals that could be put before the senate to restrict greenhouse gases particularly in the utilities sector. and i don't know if the votes are there. i'm somewhat dubious that the votes are there to do even that pace. >> and when do you need to see action on one of these bills? when are we going to see the actual bill that becomes the foundation for this debate and when does that need to come to the floor in order for you to stay on schedule? >> well, i think a lot of pieces of the bill are already done essentially they are ready to be brought to the floor. we marked up a bill in the energy and natural resources committee this past week that is a good response, beginning response at least, to the gulf's oil spill, and tries to restructure the department of interior, puts more focus on safety, ramps up penalties for violation of regulations. there's a lot of good proposals in there. there was a bill that came out

of the environment committee which eliminates the limit on liability which was in their jurisdiction, and that is also a useful part. and then of course we have have a very much larger bill that we have worked on over the last year or two that we reported out of the committee also in a bipartisan way. so all of that is ready to go. the part that we are not in agreement on yet is what would be done on the direct limitation and reduction of greenhouse gases and that, frankly, i don't know exactly how that will evolve. >> senator, you mentioned the larger energy bill that you moved through your energy committee last year. it contains some key pieces of obama's energy agenda. it has renewable electricity mandate, it has a lot of incentives for clean energy development, it has some strong transmission citing. but one reason that was bipartisan was it cluded new

offshore drilling in the gulf including new offshore drilling including the coast of florida. now, it looks like if that were to come to the floor right now, democrats are saying clearly those drilling pieces are going to have to be taken out. if they are taken out, can you still get republican support for that bill? >> well, i think we can. i think that both democrats and repuulicans realize that with what's happened in the gulf and with the investigation not yet complete as to what went wrong down there, it would not be reasonable for us to try to change the law with regard to the existing moratorium in the eastern gulf. i thinks there a recognition of that, and i'm sure it's not something that all senators would agree to but that would be my sentiment, is that i supported ae eliminating that moratorium, that statutory

moratorium on drilling in the eastern gulf as part of the bill we reported over a year ago. i do not thunching it would be a good provision to have as part of an energy bill. we tried to pass through the senate right now. there are a lot of other things we did related to offshore drilling that we should continue to pursue. >> but if you bring that to the floor now and you take out the offshore drilling, do you think that you can still get 60 votes for that energy bill? >> well, i believe we can. you know, the truth is there is no statutory prohibition on offshore drilling anywhere in the country except in the eastern gulf of mexico today. so it is essentially up to the department of interior and the administration as to which areas they make available for leasing. and i think their decision making in that regard is obviously somewhat suspended until we figure out what went

wrong in this spill and disaster that we are currently still experiencing. so the big issue is not what's congress going to do about offshore drilling, it's about what the administration is going to do about offshore drilling. and that is still a few months down the road. >> on the other side of the debate of your energy bill, are environmentalists and members of your party on the left who say that to bring up an energy only bill, even though they support the renewable electricity mandate, to pass sort of one more incremental piece of energy legislation could actually have a detrimental effect on ultimately passing comprehensive climate change legislation in the future. they fear that by passing these incremental clean energy bills one after the other, they are sort of laying a groundwork. they are eliminating that big

moment to move a comprehensive bill. and i'm sure that you are familiar with senator lindsey graham's comments about passing the energy only bill. he said that would be a half ased move and it could hurt further chances for doing something bigger. are you krntted about that or those votes? >> well, i've certainly heard that view but i think it's very misguided. my experience there in the senate is that you need to do what you can do when you can do it if you want to make progress. and if we can get support, which i think we can, bipartisan support to pass renewable electricity standard, to strengthen our ability to build out a national grid, to substantially increase efficiency with appliances, with buildings, do a variety of things, set up a clean energy deployment administration to help finance renewable energy projects, if we can do all of

that, we ought to do it. the issue of what to do about capping and reducing greenhouse gas emissions is one we need to come to grips with, and i'm ready to support efforts to do it right now as part of this larger package. if we don't have enough senators who are ready to do that, then we need to do what we can do and keep working to do that as we move ahead. >> your committee yesterday passed a legislation aimed at tightening regulation of offshore drilling. would you tell whause that will do to reduce the future znts and how are you sure this bill will be effective when we still don't know the causes of the oil spill. >> this was on wednesday. >> right. the bill does a variety of things. it makes provisions for the

restructuring of the minerals management service which the department of interior has already announced they want to pursue. that is taking the responsibility for safety of offshore drilling activities and putting that in a separate entity away from the part of the government that is worried about leasing and gathering revenues and all of that. that is a substantial step forward. it also contemplates increased requirements on the department of interior to insist upon extensive safety precautions being taken before these leasing plans are approved. or, before these drilling plans are approved. it also ratchets up the penalties on companies that might violate some of the regulations of the department. it puts in place a fee on those

who drill to provide the revenue needed to hire the additional inspectors so that we can increase the capability of the government to inspect on a very frequent basis what's going on in these drilling operations. so there's a lot in there that's good. that's not everything that needs to be done, but it is a significant improvement over current law. >> i was wondering if you could talk a little bit more about some of the recent controversy over the current ban on deep water drilling. as you know, the obama administration announced a temporary ban on deep water drilling, a federal judge recently struck that ban down saying it was arbitrary and capreeshes. some experts in offshore drilling say that this moratorium could also actually be detrimental for safety in the gulf when drilling resumes because they say it will cause

some more modern equipment and the more qualified personnel to leave the gulf to go to other markets. it will take a while to get them back. so that when drilling resumes, you will have sort of a marginal decrease in safety. what do you think the administration should do? should it allow deep water drilling to resume at this point? >> well, i think it should do what it is in the process of doing, and that is, secretary salazar has announced that he is going back to the drawing boards and is trying to develop a another moratorium but a much more targeted moratorium. and one that would be appropriate to ensure the safety of drilling operations to the extent that the administration has concerns about that. but not have it in the blanket form that was earlier struck downnby the court. i think that is the right way to proceed. clearly, the administration at least clearly to me, the administration has authority to

do that. and i think the administration has the responsibility to ensure that these drilling operations are done in a safe manner to the extent that they don't have that assurance now, they are well within their rights and their responsibilities to put in place a moratorium to get control of the situation. i don't think that has to be a six-month moratorium. i don't think it has to be any particular time period. but i think the administration is doing what it needs to do to refine their moratorium, and hopefully shorten it, and hopefully ramp up their ability to ensure the safety of these operations. >> how quickly do you think they need to allow deep water drilling to resume? and the reason i ask that question is that there is a lot of jobs at stake potentially depending on how long it takes. you're saying it shouldn't go

six months. how long do you think it should be? >> the time frame needs to be driven by the safety issues, not by the jobs issues. i mean, i don't think anybody who thinks about it would say that we ought to allow drilling operations to proceed even though we don't have confidence that they are safe, because we are worried about jobs being lost if we do not allow that drilling. so if we can assure that these drilling operations are safe, we should allow them to proceed. >> one of your democratic colleagues on the house side, george miller, has called for banning bp from doing drilling for a period of several years because of the numerous safety problems this company has had. what do you think of that? would you support such a proposal? >> well, i don't think congress should be legislating bans on any particular company. i do think it's appropriate that the department of interior look at the record of

performance of every company that wants to engage in these kinds of drilling activities and make a judgment as to whether they have the necessary management structure in place to do this in a safe way. if they determine that bp or any other company do not have in place the management structure to get this done in a safe way, then it's appropriate for them to deny them the right to proceed with drilling. >> there was a column in the "new york times" last week by jody freeman, a former counsel to president obama on climate and energy issues. and she suggested that another way congress should respond to this incident or the government should respond is to perhaps reward companies that have good safety records when it comes to drilling, possibly by reducing the amount of roilts that they have to pay, if they have good safety records and increasing royalty payments for those who do have less than perfect safety records. what do you think of that idea? >> well, as a general matter i

think we have not erred on the side of providing too few incentives for companies to do drilling in the outer continental shelf. we have this deep water royalty relief act in place which in our legislation that we have reported out of committee, we proposed to repeal. i think it should be repealed. that was put in there as an incentive to try to get companies to do more of this drilling. i think clearly that has outlived its usefulness. so i don't know. i tend to think that american taxpayer deserves a reasonable royalty for the exploitation and production of these resources which are owned by the taxpayer of the country, owned by the united states, and i think that royalty ought to be paid, and you know, i think there are plenty of ways to

provide incentives for companies to operate safely. and my wife's father had a business, and he used to joke that he had an incentive program, too, and his incentive program was one mistake and you are fired. and i think the federal government needs to have more strictness in its regulation of these act tivets. that is the main thing that's needed. >> some republicans, if i could just continue on the drilling issue. some republicans say it's inappropriate to have a bill that links the proposals related to the oil spill with proposals that are aimed at combating climate change. they think those two issues are separate, should be kept separate. what do you think of those ideas? should they be merged into one or should they be separate? >> well, frankly, the pressure to merge everything into one is

driven by the unwillingness of the republicans in the senate to cooperate with the majority in bringing legislation up and allowing it to be voted on. i think senator reed as the majority leader is left with the circumstance that there's a limit amount of time. we have about eight weeks left in the schedule of the senate before the congress adjourns prior to the election, and he is not going to have time to bring up a whole series of bills related to energy. and for that reason, i think he is conversation at least the possibility of putting some of these energy-related matters together and bringing that to the floor. >> senator, there are also a number of members of your own caucus who say they oppose that strategy. they see a lot of momentum right now for your drilling regulation bill and they say this is something that can move

quickly and give mecks something to volt on, to respond to this bill -- members to vote on, to respond to this bill, really tuck into their reelection campaigns and they fear that attaching these drilling reform rules to the broader contentious energy and climate legislation could instead just serve to think sink the whole package. is that a concern for you? >> well, the way it's been discussed with me, people are generally agreeable to the idea of bringing a bill to the floor like the one we reported out of our committee this week that responds to the oil spill. they are generally agreeable to doing the kind of bipartisan bill we have reported out of our committee last year on energy issues that we've already discussed. the place where the disagreement occurs is with regard to limiting and reducing greenhouse gases. and, as i say, i think that the majority leader is going to have to decide what can be done

on that issue as part of an energy bill and still get the votes necessary to proceed. >> of course, the house a year ago did pass a comprehensive cap and trade bill that limits gruss gases across the entire economy. would one possibility be to pass something that would just have a renewable energy standard, would not address any kind of carbon cap, and then take that to conference with the house bill and come back to the senate with something that would have a carbon cap and would that be realistic? for example, might it be possible to spass something like that in a lame duck session? >> well, we have sort of run this experiment before. i remember, i think it was 2004 when i was very involved in a conference with the house of representatives on an energy bill. we had passed one in the senate, they had passed one in

the house. as soon as the election occurred and the republicans gained some seats, which they did, they lost all interest in completing the conference. so i think that any plan that contemplates let's jist get something through the senate, and then allow a conference to occur while we're on recess, and people are campaigning and then come back in a lame duck and all of us agree on something, i think that's not likely. >> but does the senate then have to pass something before the august recess? what you are saying is that you've got to get something done before november. and that effectively means you've got to get something done, i would think, by september just because of the need to go on recess for members who are going to want to campaign. when does the senate need to have a vote? >> i think realistically for us to get a bill to the president for signature, the senate will have to pass something that it could go to conference with the

house on before we take the august break. >> and how far are you going to -- how hard are you going to be working to make that happen and what do you envision doing to make that happen? >> well, i've been advocating for moving ahead with the energy legislation. we've come out of our committee with for some time now, and i continue do that and ink realistically senator reid has pressure on him to bring a lot of different things to the floor, and i understand that. and he is going to have to choose which items to bring up, how much time to devote to them on the senate floor. that is a very difficult job, and i do not envy him that job. but i think, if we're going to get legislation to the president for signature, in this congress, i think the senate is going to have to act before the august recess. >> we have time for a couple more questions. >> senator, as you said, you have to act before the august

recess. and as you pointed out, after november there's likely to be a lot more republican seats in both chambers. so not only does that make it difficult to to impossible to pass something in a lame duck session, but it really makes it far more difficult to talk about bringing up something else in the next session of congress. if the senate can't pass something that has a carbon price in the next month, is that the last best chance for putting a price on carbon given the likely makeup of the next congress? >> well, i don't know that that's necessarily the case. you know, for the last eight or ten years around washington there's been debate about a 3-p bill, you know, talking about three different pollutants, sox, nox, and mercury. there's also been talk about a 4-p bill to pick up carbon as

well. i remember when president bush was, former president bush was running for office, he campaigned on a platform of supporting a 4-p bill and then changed his mind after he was elected and backed away from that. but i think there can be restrictions on each of these pollutants, including carbon, and i think we can do it probably in the next congress as well as in this congress. but it's got to be done in the right way. the process becomes very important, the process that you follow. and of course the -- it's a difficult lift to accomplish, but i don't think it's impossible. >> what do you see as the main trade-off in scaling back the ambition of a climate and energy bill and specifically focusing just on utilities? i mean, some of the opponents of that approach say that it will mean that you will be

generating less revenue for other important causes, there are a lot of industries that actually want to get in under a cap because they see it as a way to avoid regulation by the e.p.a., i was wondering -- which they fear is going to be a lot more costly. what do you see as the trade-offs that you are weighing here as you are trying to scale back on this bill? >> i think the key determinate is what can you get 60 people to vote for in the u.s. senate right now. that's the practical challenge that we've got. and if we could limit greenhouse gases and put in place a mechanism for reducing greenhouse gases in one sector of economy, that would be major progress, in my view. there are other ways to deal with it. there may be ways to provide incentives for retirement of coal plants which would substantially reduce greenhouse gases or accelerate the reduction of greenhouse gases

over the next several years. as i say, there's this three pollutant or multipollutant legislation as a way to i cent vise a modernizing of our power production that goes on in this country and reduce greenhouse gases as part of that. so there's a lot of different ways to approach the problems. >> isn't there a bit of a trade-off between the different goals that you're trying to achieve? a lot of times the proponents of this resolution propose it as a way to get us off of foreign oil. but when you scale it back, like say one particular sector like the utilities, aren't you sacrificing that goal that the proponents are talking about which is more politically popular with the public, reducing dependence on front

royal? >> there's so many different proposals out there. and you're right, it gets lumped together in the rhetoric. we have some provisions in the bill we've reported out of our committee which we think will help significantly in reducing the need to import foreign oil, and there's some others that have been introduced. there's a bill that senator dorgen and alexander have introduced that we have had a hearing on and i would like to see us move ahead on that. that would emphasize the importance of electrifying our transportation sector and moving us to electric cars and trucks. >> given the warning from the scientists about the urgency of doing something about climate change, you even saw the national academies of science recently endorse putting a price on climate, how essential is it in your view to pass something this year that starts to limit greenhouse gases

either through a hard cap or tax, something like that? >> that will have to be the last question. go ahead. >> i think it is very important that we try to do that. but again, we need to do what we are able too do. and i mean, i think that there is a big gap between what the scientists say we should do to deal with climate change and what the politics of the congress today and particularly the politics of the senate will allow us to do. and that's unfortunate that there's a big gap buts there a big gap, and that's just the reality we live with. >> thank you. >> thank you for being c-span's snake "newsmakers." >> i appreciate it. nice to be here. >> we're back with our two reports. coral can i start with you just to talk about the time line. what did you hear from the chairman about when some sort of bill? we don't know really what, but when a bill might come t