Vitter claimed that a climate change bill gave the President of the United States “dictatorial powers” in a “climate emergency.”

Vitter was caught quickly by a conservative blogger.  According to well-known conservative commentator Ed Morrissey,

“Senator David Vitter says he’s found another hidden within the Waxman-Markey bill that has already passed the House that would give Barack Obama the power to declare a national emergency on the basis of greenhouse-gas levels.  If true, it would undermine the entire notion of a cap-and-trade system — and give the President dictatorial powers over energy production and manufacturing. But is it true? … Well, not exactly, no …

That’s not to say that this bill isn’t dangerous, but it simply doesn’t do what Vitter claims. Nowhere in either bill does the term “climate emergency” appear, which Vitter claims is the lever through which the President will claim dictatorial powers. We need to focus on the real problems of the bill, chief among them that it will kill jobs to solve a problem that doesn’t exist, rather than generate false hysteria to answer false hysteria.  [Hot Air, 11/10/09]