David Sirota: Seven Democrats who voted against fracking ban trying to secure future elections

According to The Daily Poster journalist David Sirota, the seven Senate Democrats who joined Republicans in voting to block the government from banning fracking did so in order to benefit their future political campaigns.

This week, seven Democratic senators — Michael Bennett (Colo.), John Hickenlooper (Colo.), Martin Heinrich (N.M.), Ben Ray Luján (N.M.),  Joe Manchin (W.Va.), Jon Tester (Mont.) and Angus King (Maine.) — voted with their Republican colleagues to add a non-binding amendment to the budget.

“Their motivation is most likely to be on record saying that they’re opposing a fracking ban in advance of their future election campaigns,” Sirota said while appearing Hill.TV’s “Rising.” “This gives them away to essentially signal to their oil and gas donors that, ‘Hey, we will vote to block the government from banning fracking.'”

Sirota notes that as a non-binding amendment, the Senate Budget Committee does not have to do as the amendment instructs.

However, he said such a vote was an important “test case” to show where the Senate truly stood on fossil fuels, noting that this vote came soon after a report from the U.N.’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change that warned humans have caused irreparable warming to the Earth’s atmosphere and that some consequences of global climate change will now be unavoidable.