{"id":4464,"date":"2009-04-15T06:00:00","date_gmt":"2009-04-15T12:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.nmpolitics.net\/index\/2009\/04\/bingaman-energy-health-care-on-the-agenda\/"},"modified":"2009-04-15T06:00:00","modified_gmt":"2009-04-15T12:00:00","slug":"bingaman-energy-health-care-on-the-agenda","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/2009\/04\/bingaman-energy-health-care-on-the-agenda\/","title":{"rendered":"Bingaman: Energy, health care on the agenda"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

\n

On trip to Las Cruces, senator also talks about economy, the border<\/span> <\/span><\/p>\n

Renewable energy and health-care reform are the primary issues, other than the struggling economy, that New Mexico\u2019s senior U.S. senator says he expects Congress to tackle this year.<\/p>\n

\u201cThose are going to be the big debates in the Congress for the rest of this year, I think — at least of those we can anticipate,\u201d Sen. Jeff Bingaman<\/a> said in an interview conducted this week in Las Cruces.<\/p>\n

Bingaman, a Democrat, was in the southern part of the state to tour a computer-manufacturing facility on the Mexican side of the border and meet with local law-enforcement officials in Las Cruces to discuss immigration and border issues.<\/p>\n

But he said the economic situation has forced immigration and border security to take a backseat to some other issues in Washington. While he expects Congress to once again take up comprehensive immigration reform during the current, two-year session, he said it\u2019s more likely to happen next year.<\/p>\n

In the meantime, there is still a lot of attention being directed to the border and the violence in Mexico. Bingaman said some stimulus money has been set aside to significantly increase the number of agents from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives<\/a> in Las Cruces — from four to 11 — and customs agents have stepped up their inspection of vehicles heading south.<\/p>\n

Both moves are part of the attempt to stop the flow of weapons from the United States to Mexico. Most guns in Mexico come from the United States.<\/p>\n

Bingaman said such steps are necessary, and the United States needs to continue to help its neighbor to the south deal with drug-related crime, but another attempt at approving comprehensive reform will have to wait a bit.<\/p>\n

Energy and health care<\/span><\/p>\n

In the meantime, Bingaman is focused, in his role as chairman of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee<\/a>, on crafting a package that will aim to improve energy efficiency, expand the deployment of renewable energy around the nation and provide more financial support for increased capacity.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s the easier stuff, Bingaman said. The real energy debate in the Senate will be about creating a cap-and-trade program that would set an annual target on the amount of carbon that can be released into the atmosphere and would allow firms to buy, sell and trade carbon credits. Such a program would also provide incentives to promote a gradual transition to new, lower-carbon technologies.<\/p>\n

Bingaman has unsuccessfully pushed such a proposal for years.<\/p>\n

\u201cI hope we can do it this year,\u201d Bingaman said. \u201cI strongly support the enactment of a cap-and-trade system.\u201d<\/p>\n

The senator is also a member of both committees — Finance<\/a> and Heath and Education<\/a> — that will tackle health-care reform. Hearings on the topic will start in May, and Bingaman expects a comprehensive bill to be brought forth this summer.<\/p>\n

He expects such a bill to include public and private insurance options with a mandate that all individuals obtain insurance. He also expects cost-controlling measures to be included in the reform package, in addition to a prohibition against rejecting people or claims because of pre-existing conditions.<\/p>\n

The economy<\/span><\/p>\n

Though Bingaman sounds optimistic about the chances for approval of health-care reform and some type of energy package, he sounds a bit less certain about what will happen with the nation\u2019s economy. He said he hopes it is \u201cback on the mend\u201d a year from now, with jobs being created each month. But he added that he doesn\u2019t know whether that will happen.<\/p>\n

<\/span>President Barack Obama<\/a> and Congress \u201care doing very much everything they can think of to reverse the downward spiral we\u2019ve been in,\u201d Bingaman said, but he cautioned that some of the attempts to help, such as the massive stimulus plans, are \u201cbreaking new ground.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re not sure that\u2019s going to have the desired effect,\u201d he said of Obama\u2019s stimulus plan. \u201c\u2026 I don\u2019t have a better proposal and most of the people criticizing him don\u2019t seem to either.\u201d<\/p>\n

Bingaman said the stimulus will do some good by bringing money into New Mexico. While it\u2019s unfortunate that it will also add to the nation\u2019s debt, Bingaman said economists he has spoken with tell him such increased spending is \u201cthe smart thing to do.\u201d When Americans spend less and save money to deal with tough economic times, Bingaman said, \u201cthe government has to take the exact opposite position, or the whole thing comes to a halt.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

On trip to Las Cruces, senator also talks about economy, the border Renewable energy and health-care reform are the primary issues, other than the struggling economy, that New Mexico\u2019s senior U.S. senator says he expects Congress to tackle this year. \u201cThose are going to be the big debates in the Congress for the rest of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4464","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4464","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4464"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4464\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4464"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4464"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4464"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}