‘You Can’t Regulate God’ Says Texas Republican
The U.S. House of Representatives just voted on and passed a bill providing $15.3 billion for states impacted by Hurricane Harvey, mostly Texas and Louisiana. It is now on its way to President Trump’s desk, where he is expected to sign it. The vote was 316-90. All 90 “no” votes were from Republicans, including four Republicans from Texas. No Democrats voted against it.
The legislation also raises the debt ceiling for a three-month period, a vital congressional responsibility that, if not taken, would lead to the U.S. government defaulting on its debts, sending Americans and worldwide markets into a tailspin.
Nearly six out of ten House Republicans are climate change deniers. No House Democrat is.Â
“Of the 180 climate science deniers in the 115th Congress, 142 are in the House and 38 are in the Senate,” ThinkProgress reports. “That’s more than 59 percent of the Republican House caucus and 73 percent of Republicans in the Senate that deny the scientific consensus that climate change is happening, human activity is the main cause, and it is a serious threat. No Democrats publicly deny the science behind climate change.”
GOP Rep. Joe Barton, a Tea Party whackadoodle who earlier this year told a constituent at a town hall to “shut up,” was one of the four “no” votes from Texas. He “said this week that the deal amounted to asking lawmakers to essentially ‘sign a blank check,’ to add to the nation’s nearly $20 trillion debt,” The Dallas Morning News reports.
Climate change is making hurricanes like Harvey, and now Irma, worse.Â
Climate change deniers like Rep. Barton – who actually sits on the House Subcommittee on Environment and Economy – are part of the problem, and they now part of the problem in fixing the problems their views and actions have helped to create.
Unsurprisingly, Rep. Barton has accepted well over $2 million in campaign contributions from the oil and gas industry.
The “party of responsibility” has demonstrated none.
Barton, by the way, once suggested that wind is a “finite resource.”
He has used the biblical great flood as evidence climate change is not man-made (video above), and said in response to global warming, find some shade:
Barton also once blasted then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi over a climate change bill, saying, “You can’t regulate God.”
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