 | |
|---|---|
| Description | Adds sanctions on polluters, lowers taxes on non-polluters |
| Status | Never received a vote |
The Clean Jobs Bill was a major piece of legislation that Vice President Selina Meyer had worked diligently on in her first year as vice president. The bill never made it to a vote in the 113th United States Congress.
The bulk of the Clean Jobs legislation was featured in the Macauley Amendment, an amendment featured on the Fiscal Responsibility Bill. The amendment was rejected in the Senate in 2013.
Background[]
Placement of Chuck Furnham []
Early in her first year as vice president, Meyer wanted the implementation of a Clean Jobs commission to be her legacy, which would place sanctions on polluters and provide tax breaks for the "good guys". Senator Andrew Doyle wanted Meyer to agree to keep oil guys off the Clean Jobs task force in exchange for his sponsorship of the Senate reform bill, another piece of legislation she wanted to push through. However, Meyer knew she'd already agreed to put an oil guy on the task force. Dan Egan suggested putting an ex-oil guy on the task force.
Meyer's top choice for the task force is ex-oil Chuck Furnham in an effort to appease both the oil lobby and the anti-oil lobby. Anti-oil Senator Doyle hates the idea of placing Furnham on the task force due to Furnham's former connections to oil, and pro-oil Barbara Hallowes hates the idea because Furnham isn't oily enough. However, by this point, Furnham had announced that he would be on the task force.
VP Meyer delivers the tie vote against the Macauley Amendment; October 2013.
At a remembrance for the late Senator Reeves, word comes that President Stuart Hughes, bowing to oil pressure, wanted Sidney Purcell on the clean jobs task force. Egan stepped into action and offered Purcell an unofficial back channel to Meyer, then congratulated Doyle for pushing Furnham out and getting the much oilier Purcell in the bargain. Doyle is flummoxed and eats crow to get Chuck Furnham back on the task force.
Macauley Amendment[]
In October 2013, Meyer drafted the Clean Jobs Bill, which put emphasis on adding sanctions on polluters and lowering taxes on non-polluters. However, President Hughes decided that he wanted all emphasis on the Fiscal Responsibility Bill, so he dropped Clean Jobs.
Meyer's deputy director of communications Dan Egan went behind Meyer's back and contacted Senator Macauley, who was a big proponent of Clean Jobs, and got Macauley to add the bulk of Clean Jobs as an amendment to the Fiscal Responsibility Bill. The Macauley Amendment received a tied vote in the Senate. Meyer was forced to cancel a trip to Paris to cast the deciding vote. Meyer was unsure of what to do--she had worked tirelessly on Clean Jobs for months, but to vote for the amendment would be going against the president's wishes. Meyer ultimately voted against the amendment.
Following the amendment's failure in the Senate, various members of Meyer's team, including Meyer herself, implied that they knew about Egan's actions in lobbying Senator Macauley. Meyer insisted she wanted nothing to do with it as she doesn't want to appear disloyal to Hughes.
Ohio Congressman Roger Furlong appeared to have full knowledge of Egan's role in the Macauley Amendment and threatened to drag the vice president's office into a congressional hearing. In November 2014, the party lost it's majority in the House of Representatives, scraping Furlong of his ability to investigate the Meyer offices.