Spine Sighting

Perhaps it is no more than the latest example of a presidential honeymoon. Nevertheless, at a time of severe economic distress, President Barack Obama remains popular. Polls show he has twice as many supporters as critics. Those same polls show Congress has twice as many critics as supporters.

Thankfully, however, this huge popularity gap no longer seems to be inhibiting lawmakers from pushing back vigorously against several of the most dubious elements of the president's ambitious agenda.

Congress is balking at Obama's request for another $250 billion to help bail out the financial industry. Given the continuing problems with getting the government to explain just what it did with the original $700 billion Troubled Asset Relief Program, lawmakers are right to say no. Even if it could finally be documented that TARP was spent in smart and defensible ways, there is something fundamentally objectionable about any White House asking for a gigantic sum of money without giving a very specific idea of what it would be used to do.

Congress is also balking at Obama's plan to partly fund his health care proposal by raising $267 billion over the next 10 years through limiting common tax deductions for the wealthy. Many lawmakers rightly object to tax hikes during a deep recession, even on the demonized rich. Meanwhile, Obama's health proposal in general is also drawing increased skepticism from a bipartisan swath of senators who believe its costs are sharply underestimated and worry that it might doom private health insurance.

The most striking resistance to an Obama initiative can be seen with the centerpiece of his climate change proposals.

The president's call for a "cap and trade" program — creating a hugely costly system in which carbon emissions would be limited, and the government would auction off the right to emit carbon — is in deep trouble.

A growing number of Democrats — especially in industrial states and in states dependent on coal — have joined Republicans in rejecting the environmental movement's absurd claim that forcing U.S. businesses and consumers to spend far more on energy would somehow benefit the economy. Other lawmakers question why the United States should burden its economy with unique costs that other major polluters aren't also imposing. Still others cite the Congressional Budget Office study that showed the working poor would bear a disproportionate brunt of the vast economic fallout from cap and trade.

This is great news. There's always been a pie-in-the-sky quality to Obama's proposals on how to deal with global warming. Finally, propaganda is giving way to cold truths.

No, we are not global warming skeptics. We are skeptics of unilateral attempts to tackle the problem that minimize the inevitable economic damage. In Congress — if not in the California Legislature — this sort of skepticism could soon amount to conventional wisdom. It's about time.

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