The General Assembly gets back to business next week, with a list of pre-filed bills to consider and others still sitting in committees.
Senate Transportation Committee Chairman Larry Grooms has filed a bill to tell Congress they disapprove of current cap and trade legislation that is now in the Senate. Grooms explained, “As an official declaration to Congress, should it pass, it would send a strong message that South Carolina does not support cap and trade, but we would look for some other types of renewable energy standards, and that should be left up to the state.”
Senator Lindsey Graham is trying to hammer out a compromise plan for cap and trade. Grooms, who is running for governor, says he met with his fellow Republican. “To him (Sen. Graham), I expressed my thoughts, that it would be very harmful to South Carolina for some type of cap and trade mandates from the federal government to be passed. I am now introducing that as a resolution, and hope to gain support from other members of the General Assembly.”
This is a concurrent resolution which would simply serve as the official South Carolina statement on the issue.
Another similar bill in debate that will be taken up when lawmakers return, is a statement of state’s rights versus federal.
Groom says the “sovereignty bill” is to “simply send a message to Congress that we believe in the 10th Amendment. We believe that you do not have a right to do certain things. And set that as our official policy and if the federal government violates the 10th Amendment it gives us some standing in courts. That is one of the precidents that we can point to when we say ‘we tried to assert our rights and you ignored it,’ when we seek relief in the courts.”
This measure was hotly debated in the 2009 part of the session and may come up again soon, says Senator Grooms.
