According to a report from TPM, a more timely decision making process for the Keystone XL pipeline was not the only rider in this week's tax-cut-extending bill, which the House of Boehner has now rejected.
The other rider was a federal law, signed by former President Bush, ushering in new energy-efficiency standards for light bulbs.
Who’s afraid of the big, bad light bulb? The GOP pushed through two energy related riders to the omnibus spending bill this week, and while Senator Orrin Hatch (R-UT) called President Obama a “scaredy cat” over the Keystone XL Pipeline rider, the other rider doesn’t exactly cast Republican legislators in a courageous light: it delays funding for the implementation of law that phases in new energy efficiency standards for light bulbs.
The standards, which were first passed by Congress in 2007 and signed into law by President George W. Bush, require 25 percent greater efficiency from all light bulbs sold in the U.S., beginning with 100-watt in 2012. As incandescents are currently unable to reach such levels of efficiency, the new standards would have effectively taken them off the market beginning in January, leading some conservatives to characterize the standards as a light bulb “ban.”
Hey, if you're going to draw a line in the sand somewhere, it might as well be between antiquated incandescent bulbs and CFLs!
We can only let the government go so far, ya' know? If we let the government tell us how efficient our sources of lighting must be, tomorrow they will be telling us what to eat!
I suppose you could call this a victory for the Republicans, if by victory you mean they were successful at looking like idiots, but since King Boehner and the House Republicans have rejected the senate's 2-month deal, we may end up suffering under the tyranny of energy-efficient light bulbs come January after all.