Obama Likely to Rebrand Climate Bill

CQ Politics
Jan. 29, 2010

Despite the obituaries being written for Senate passage of a cap-and-trade bill this year, President Obama is expected to reiterate his call for comprehensive clean energy and climate change legislation and to rebrand it as part of his job-creation agenda.

White House officials and senators leading efforts to write a bipartisan climate bill signaled Wednesday that they will keep pushing hard for legislation that would curb emissions of greenhouse gases and boost development of alternative energy.

At a clean energy forum Wednesday, White House energy and climate adviser Carole Browner previewed the energy and environment slice of the president’s State of the Union address.

Stressing the need for legislation to eliminate dependence on foreign oil, put a price signal on carbon emissions and mandate an increase in electricity from renewable sources, Browner stuck to the “jobs” script and never used the phrase “cap and trade.”

“This is about creating a new generation of clean energy jobs that will position us in a global market, and we need the legislation to do that,” she said.

Experts expect the president also to avoid the cap-and-trade label —which many lawmakers see as a confusing turn-off to voters — in his remarks to the nation, instead framing the plan with the rhetoric of jobs creation.

Meanwhile, White House officials said the boost in spending on alternative energy research, which Obama began last year in the stimulus and has consistently listed as a top priority, will emerge relatively unscathed from the president’s proposed spending freeze.

“We’re still working on making investments in clean energy,” Rob Nabors, deputy director of the White House’s Office of Management and Budget, told reporters in a conference call. “Not everything in the budget is of equal importance to the country — or to the president’s agenda. Those things that are the most important to the president, the things like education, things like energy research — they’re at the top of the list. There are other things that aren’t at the top of the list, and we felt that those areas could be most effectively reduced.”