Senators revise climate bill to court GOP support

Senators trying to craft bipartisan climate legislation offered a
revised proposal Thursday that would add incentives for building nuclear
power plants and open the way for expanded oil and gas drilling off the
nation's coastlines in hopes of attracting wider support.

The new framework for a Senate climate bill would ease back
requirements for early reductions of greenhouse gases. It calls for cuts in
the range of 17 percent by 2020, instead of 20 percent, similar to
reductions already approved by the House and what Obama will call for at an
international climate conference in Copenhagen.

"We would like to underscore the fact that the framework we are
releasing today is a starting point for our negotiations going forward,"
said Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass.

The framework provided only a broad view of what a compromise bill
would include with details to emerge early next year. But it reflects a
widespread view that the climate bill that advanced out of committee in
early November would need to be significantly revised for any hope of
getting bipartisan support from at least 60 senators.

White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs said in a statement that the
framework released "is a positive development toward reaching a strong,
unified and bipartisan agreement in the U.S. Senate."

Gibbs said the passage of comprehensive energy legislation was
essential to the president's other efforts to build a new energy foundation.

The blueprint's release also was timed to give American delegates at
the Copenhagen climate talks, now under way, additional ammunition in their
argument that the U.S. is taking climate change seriously and that Congress
is making progress - although at a glacial pace - on reducing heat-trapping
greenhouse pollution.

Kerry has for weeks been working with Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham
of North Carolina and Sen. Joe Lieberman, I-Conn., on broadening the Senate
bill in hopes of gaining more Republican support. No Republican senator has
endorsed the legislation Democrats pushed out of the Environment and Public
Works Committee, although Graham supports the need to address climate change
and mandatory reductions in greenhouse gases.

The revised proposal will "a send a strong message to the world
gathering at Copenhagen. That message is the United States is committed to
addressing this challenge," said Kerry at a news conference, joined by the
two other senators.

But the three acknowledged they are nowhere near getting the votes
needed to overcome a certain GOP filibuster threat on any climate
legislation. "We don't have 60 votes," said Lieberman.

Graham said the commitment to expand nuclear energy and open new
opportunities for new oil and gas drilling both on shore and on the Outer
Continental Shelf is hoped to attract additional support from Republican
senators.

The senators said the bill would include tax credits and a substantial
increase in government loan guarantees for building nuclear reactors as well
as some streamlining of the reactor permitting process. Currently loan
guarantees for new reactors - which can cost $9 billion or more each - are
limited to a total of $18.5 billion, and even those have yet to be awarded
by the Energy Department.

The legislation also would open the way for offshore oil and gas
drilling with the proceeds shared between the federal government and nearby
states. Where to drill and how much revenue will be shared with states will
depend on negotiations on the bill, said Graham.

The outline embraces the so-called cap and trade approach in the
existing Senate climate bill in which the government would limit greenhouse
gas emissions from power plants and other industrial facilities, but allow
the trading of emission allowances to ease the cost of compliance. Opponents
widely have likened cap and trade to an energy tax, saying it will boost
energy prices for consumers, prompting Senate sponsors of the bill to avoid
the phrase whenever possible.

"Remember there was once the artist previously known as Prince,"
Lieberman quipped. "This is the market based system for punishing polluters
previously known as cap and trade."