Democrats plan to include significant climate programs in the second bill. This includes a provision that would basically pay electric utilities to produce energy from nonpolluting resources and tax incentives for consumers who buy electric cars.This package was unveiled Wednesday by Senator Brian Schatz (Democrat of Hawaii) as a starter in climate policy. It's not the main dish.He has been pushing Mr. Biden on his ambitious climate promises. Mr. Schatz called the climate provisions in this measure fine. He noted that Republicans and Democrats are now on the same page about the need for protection of parts of the country from climate-driven droughts, storms, and floods. He cautioned that if we only do a little bit of resilience programming and nibbling around the edges, then we are not solving climate change. We were only responding to the fact we are not solving climate change.A few Republicans filed out Wednesday afternoon from a meeting with blue binder containing a summary of the bill. It contained a 30-page document. They wanted to see the legislative language, which lawmakers claimed could be as many as 700 pages before voting for the package.It's a large stack of paper, according to Senator John Boozman of Arkansas.Bipartisan legislation would allocate $7.5 billion to the first federal effort to create a nationwide network of electric vehicle charging stations. This is not even close to the $174 million that Mr. Biden would like to spend on 500,000 electric vehicle charging station construction.
