The Left is acting as if its political dominance — super majorities in both houses of Congress and, of course, the Presidency — eliminates the need for thoughtful debate. Over the past eight months, politicians in Washington have pushed an ambitious agenda highlighted by several trillion dollar proposals (stimulus, health care and climate), all of which deserved substantive debate and cautious consideration.

Unfortunately, all these proposals were rushed, diminishing debate even as dissenters were summarily dismissed. Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) accused boisterous dissenters of being “un-American,” while Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) characterized efforts to engage in a substantive debate as “obstructionist tactics.” Similarly, President Obama often notes that “doing nothing” is not an option. Critics and opponents of liberal reform are now in the crosshairs.

All this rhetoric obscures one simple fact: Americans are genuinely concerned with the direction of our country. Recent events at town hall meetings across the country are evidence the American people want to engage in a genuine debate about our country’s future. Unfortunately, the Left would rather ignore or demagogue the existence of alternative points of view. And while you wouldn’t know it from the media coverage, there are plenty of alternatives.

Let’s take a look.

Stimulus

During the “stimulus” debate, President Obama said “the strongest democracies flourish from frequent and lively debate.” But, he added, Congress needed to “pass this plan” “without delay.” Such a formulation, while eloquent, was intended to dismiss the very thoughtful options proposed by others. Republicans in the House and Senate offered a comprehensive alternative. Senator Jim DeMint’s (R-S.C.) American Option emphasized international competitiveness and aimed to reward entrepreneurship. Senator John Ensign’s (R-Nev.) Fix Housing First Act, while flawed, was another good-faith alternative. There were plenty of good ideas to stimulate the economy. What was lacking was our political leaders’ willingness to engage in real debate.

Health Care Reform

Senator Reid’s fond of saying that those who oppose liberal health care reform support the “status quo.” Yet a quick glance at The Patients’ Choice Act of 2009 demonstrates that no one has a monopoly on reform.

The legislation, introduced by Senators Tom Coburn (R-Okla.) and Richard Burr (R-N.C.) along with Representatives Paul Ryan (R-Wisc.) and Devin Nunes (R-Calif.), is equally as ambitious in its attempts to transform America’s health care system, though it does so through very different mechanisms. The aforementioned Senators repeatedly offered to discuss their proposal with Senator Reid. According to well-placed sources, the invitation has gone unacknowledged.

Senator DeMint also has his Health Care Freedom Plan, which is far from the status quo. Again, ideas are abundant and, in this case, actually preceded the hodgepodge of liberal ideas being discussed.

“Clean Energy”

In case you haven’t noticed, the President and many of his allies have abandoned their climate-change rhetoric, instead opting for code words like “clean energy incentives,” “all of the above” and “jobs.” The new verbiage is based on poll-tested language that was necessitated when the public rejected a cap-and-trade scheme. If liberals want to talk about energy production and jobs, conservatives have ideas and actual legislative proposals that would really work.

The American Energy Act, introduced by House Republicans, and the energy-focused No Cost Stimulus Act introduced by Senator David Vitter (R-La.) and Representative Rob Bishop (R-Utah) are just two examples. This isn’t the debate the House of Representatives had this year, but it’s the debate the American people deserve.

Small Ticket Alternatives

The existence of alternatives is readily apparent to any intellectually honest observer. And alternatives were offered on other contentious laws enacted this year. Senator Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) offered a conservative alternative to the State Children’s Health Insurance Program expansion. Senator Burr offered an alternative, along with Senator Kay Hagan (D-N.C.), on tobacco regulation reform. Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison (R-Texas) offered a thoughtful and workable alternative to the wage discrimination legislation. This is hardly a “just say no” philosophy.

New, Innovative Ideas

Conservatives have also offered some innovative ideas of their own. Representative Joe Pitts (R-Penn.) introduced legislation that would bring a new approach to nuclear power, jettisoning subsidies in favor of regulatory certainty. Representative Tom McClintock (R-Calif.) and Senator Vitter introduced the RAISE Act, which would remove the “seniority ceiling” on wages paid to unionized workers. Senator John Thune (R-S.D.) introduced the Government Ownership Exit Plan Act to set a date certain for ending government ownership of banks, auto companies and various other private entities.

It is disingenuous to say conservatives are without ideas. If the media, Congress and the President are interested in real reform, real dialogue and a real American-style debate, they should recognize that they don’t hold a monopoly on ideas, community organizing or the passion of the American people.

President Obama’s global warming agenda has been losing support in Congress, but why let an irritant like democratic consent interfere with saving the world? So last Friday the Environmental Protection Agency decided to put a gun to the head of Congress and play cap-and-trade roulette with the U.S. economy.

Ed Markey

The pistol comes in the form of a ruling that carbon dioxide is a dangerous pollutant that threatens the public and therefore must be regulated under the 1970 Clean Air Act. This so-called “endangerment finding” sets the clock ticking on a vast array of taxes and regulation that EPA will have the power to impose across the economy, and all with little or no political debate.

This is a momentous decision that has the potential to affect the daily life of every American, yet most of the media barely noticed, and those that did largely applauded. When America’s Founders revolted against “taxation without representation,” this is precisely the kind of kingly diktat they had in mind.

Michigan Democrat John Dingell helped to write the Clean Air Act, as well as its 1990 revision, and he says neither was meant to apply to carbon. But in 2007 five members of the Supreme Court followed the environmental polls and ordered the EPA to determine if CO2 qualified as a “pollutant.” The Bush Administration prudently slow-walked the decision. As Peter Glaser, an environmental lawyer at Troutman Sanders, told Congress in 2008, “The country will experience years, if not decades, of regulatory agony, as EPA will be required to undertake numerous, controversial, time-consuming, expensive and difficult regulatory proceedings, all of which ultimately will be litigated.”

The Obama EPA has now opened this Pandora’s box. The centerpiece of the Clean Air Act is something called the National Ambient Air Quality Standards, or NAAQS, under which the EPA decides the appropriate atmospheric concentration of a given air pollutant. Under this law the states must adopt measures to meet a NAAQS goal, and the costs cannot be considered. For global warming, this is going to be a hugely expensive futility parade.

Greenhouse gases mix in the atmosphere, and it doesn’t matter where they come from. A ton of emissions from Ohio has the same effect on global CO2 as a ton emitted in China; and even if Ohio figured out a way to reduce its emissions to zero, it would still have no control over the carbon content in its ambient air. But under the law, EPA would be required to severely punish Ohio — and every state — for not complying with NAAQS.

Under the Clean Air Act, the EPA also must regulate all “major” sources of emissions that emit more than 250 tons of an air pollutant in a year. That includes “any building, structure, facility or installation.” This might be a reasonable threshold for conventional pollutants such as SOX or NOX, but it’s extremely low for carbon. Hundreds of thousands of currently unregulated sources will suddenly be subject to the EPA’s preconstruction permitting and review, including schools, hospitals, malls, restaurants, farms and colleges. According to EPA, the average permit today takes 866 hours for a source to prepare, and 301 hours for EPA to process. So this regulatory burden will increase by several orders of magnitude.

The EPA took the highly unusual step of not accompanying its endangerment finding with actual proposed regulations. For now, EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson claims her agency will only target cars and trucks. That is bad enough. It probably means, for example, that California’s mileage fleet burdens will seep out to every other state. So even as taxpayers are now paying tens of billions of dollars to prop up GM and Chrysler, Ms. Jackson will be able to tell the entire auto industry it must make even more small cars that consumers don’t want to buy.

Still, why confine the rule only to cars and trucks? By the EPA’s own logic, it shouldn’t matter where carbon emissions come from. Carbon from a car’s tailpipe is the same as carbon from a coal-fired power plant. And transportation is responsible for only 28% of U.S. emissions, versus 34% for electricity generation. Ms. Jackson is clearly trying to limit the immediate economic impact of her ruling, so as not to ignite too great a business or consumer backlash.

But her half-measure is also too clever by half. By finding carbon a public danger, she is inviting lawsuits from environmental lobbies demanding that EPA regulate all carbon sources. Massachusetts and two other states have already sued in federal court to force the EPA to create a NAAQS for CO2.

Which brings us back to the Obama Administration’s political roulette. Democrats know that their cap-and-tax agenda is losing ground, notably among Midwestern Senators. The EPA “endangerment” is intended to threaten businesses and state and local governments until they surrender and support the Obama agenda. The car industry is merely the first target, meant to be the object lesson.

Massachusetts Democrat Ed Markey put it this way at MIT recently: “Do you want the EPA to make the decision or would you like your Congressman or Senator to be in the room and drafting legislation? . . . Industries across the country will just have to gauge for themselves how lucky they feel if they kill legislation in terms of how the EPA process will include them.”

This “Dirty Harry” theory of governance — Do you feel lucky? — is as cynical as it is destructive. And contra Mr. Markey, if cap and tax is killed this year, it will be done in by Democrats, many of whom are starting to realize the economic harm it would inflict. In March, the Senate voted 89 to 8 on a resolution vowing to pass a climate bill only if “such legislation does not increase electricity or gasoline prices.”

That’s called democracy, but for the Obama Administration such debate is an inconvenient truth. If they can’t get Congress to pass their agenda, they’ll use EPA and the courts to impose it. How lucky do you feel?