Gingrich served in Congress from 1979 to 1999; Pelosi has served since 1987. By comparison, the current House Speaker, John Boehner, who has worked in Congress with Pelosi for more than 20 years, has cosponsored only 104 bills with her — more than 300 bills fewer than Gingrich.
While much of the legislation Gingrich and Pelosi cosponsored was non-divisive — such as approving an award for Mother Teresa and granting a Congressional Medal to former President Gerald Ford — his sponsorship of the Global Warming Prevention Act of 1989 is the likeliest to stir controversy among Republican voters.
The legislation, which never made it out of committee, professed that climate change was "a major threat to political stability, international security and economic prosperity." The bill’s title asserted the following:
To establish national policies and support and encourage international agreements that implement energy and natural resource conservation strategies appropriate to preventing the overheating of the Earth's atmosphere, known as the "greenhouse effect".
Further, the 1989 bill established two goals:
(1) that the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere be reduced from 1987 levels by at least 20 percent by the year 2005 through a mix of Federal and State energy policies; and (2) the establishment of an International Global Agreement on the Atmosphere by 1992. Requires the Secretary of Energy (the Secretary) and the Administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency to report to the Congress within two years regarding whether a higher level of carbon dioxide emissions reduction is desirable after 2005, together with any necessary policy actions and their costs and benefits.
The Global Warming Prevention Act should also draw pro-lifers into the controversy, as it used language about access to "family planning services," and advocated a form of population control, affirming that "curbing world population growth will be critical to achieving the goals."
Title XI of the bill, "World Population Growth," stated, "It is the policy of the United States that family planning services should be made available to all persons requesting them." Further, through the United Nations, it sought to authorize "appropriations for FY 1991 through 1995 for international population and family planning assistance."
Alongside Pelosi, several other pro-choice advocates sponsored the bill, including John Conyers, Barbara Boxer, Barney Frank, and Chuck Schumer.
Of course, the revelation that Gingrich would have supported such legislation should be no surprise, considering some of the GOP candidate’s past remarks regarding cap-and-trade and other environmental policies. For instance, in a February 2007 interview, he averred,
I think if you have mandatory carbon caps combined with a trading system, much like we did with sulfur, and if you have a tax-incentive program for investing in the solutions, that there’s a package there that’s very, very good. And frankly, it’s something I would strongly support.
For those who may not yet have seen it, here is the 2008 Gingrich-Pelosi commercial on climate change:
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Photo of Nancy Pelosi: AP Images
