The Ritz-Carlton Bachelor Gulch hotel in Beaver Creek, Colo., site of a $113,753 Xcel board of directors retreat

DENVER — With St. Paul–based Xcel Energy on pace to disconnect power to some 70,000 Coloradans this year for nonpayment, energy activists there are openly questioning why ratepayers should pick up the tab for lavish executive board-member dinners, hotel and spa retreats and luxury box tickets to professional sports games. But those who want the Colorado Public Utilities Commission to establish a firm policy cracking down on such excesses likely won’t get their wish anytime soon, according to a commission spokesman.

The PUC is set to begin final deliberations on Xcel’s latest rate-increase request — its second in the last year — on Dec. 3, but PUC spokesman Terry Bote said the commissioners will probably only consider the merits the of the $136 million rate hike and not delve into rule changes for travel and entertainment expenses.

“The commission can’t set a rule by deliberation in a rate case, so if they were going to make a rule, they would have to go into a rule-making proceeding to do that,” Bote told the Colorado Independent. “If they choose to, they can put language in the order that says, ‘We don’t expect these types of expenses to be included in future rate cases,’ but that’s not binding, obviously.”

The issue first came up during testimony in the nearly $180 million rate case in Denver earlier this month (Xcel has since reduced that amount in a settlement with consumer groups by nearly $44 million). Clean energy and consumer advocates pointed out Minnesota Attorney General Lori Swanson had a serious problem with excessive Xcel travel and entertainment charges last summer.

Some of those charges included a $113,753 Xcel board of directors retreat at the ultra-luxury Ritz-Carlton Bachelor Gulch hotel near Beaver Creek in Colorado’s Eagle County — of which Xcel tried to pass $36,149 on to Minnesota ratepayers, according to testimony by the state AG’s office. Other items included first-class airline tickets and luxury hotel stays for top Xcel executives during conferences in Europe.

That testimony prompted Xcel, which provides power to 5 million customers in eight states, including Colorado, to trim $3.9 million in travel and entertainment expenses from its $132 million rate case in Minnesota last summer. Regulators ultimately allowed for an overall $91 million increase in that state.

The Minnesota rate case caught the attention of Colorado energy activists who tried earlier this month to introduce the Minnesota AG’s testimony into the Colorado rate-case docket. The Colorado PUC rejected that move but did request more information from Xcel on whether similar charges were being included the Colorado rate case. Xcel introduced an exhibit on the final day of testimony detailing more than $120,000 in expenses.

The tab included dinner bills in excess of $10,000 and board retreats at luxury spas in Boulder for more than $40,000. Xcel immediately offered to remove those expenses from its rate-increase request.

“The commission has never disallowed these sorts of expenditures in the past and the company finds that these occasional expenses are a reasonable cost of business, but offered to remove the costs from its historic test year during the hearings,” a company spokesman said. “The company will offer to remove the same amount from its forecasted test year, meaning that customers in Colorado will not be paying for these types of expenses.”

However, attorney Dennis Kelly, an “intervener” in the rate case on behalf of a grassroots Arapahoe County group called the ArapaHOPE Community Team, said his organization and others fought hard to get the Minnesota case into the record because they want the Colorado PUC to establish a firm policy on exorbitant travel and entertainment expenses.

“One of the reasons we really wanted to get this into the docket is because I don’t think that these costs had ever really been reviewed by the Colorado Public Utilities Commission, and I don’t think they really have set guidelines on any of this,” Kelly said.

Now activists in Minnesota are calling out Xcel for its annual $5.8 million corporate aviation budget, according the Minneapolis Star Tribune. The company maintains two eight-passenger Learjets — which cost about $1,200 an hour to fly – mostly for company executives to travel between Minneapolis and Denver, its two largest markets.

David O. Williams writes for the Colorado Independent, sister site to the Minnesota Independent.

Under the proposed 50/50 formula, utilities that are more coal dependent will need to purchase even more allowances than they would have if all allowances were allocated based on emissions.

Well, yeah. And under the current proposed 50/50 formula, the coal burners would also have to purchase more allowances than if Congress did nothing at all. But the whole point of the bill is to discourage the use of high-emission energies like coal by making them less affordable than cleaner alternatives. Sheppard explains further why the lawmakers’ argument makes little sense in the context of the global warming debate:

Of course, this would work against the entire logic of the proposed scheme, which is to offer utilities financial incentives to switch to lower-carbon fuel sources. [...]

Right now, the climate bill needs all the votes it can get from Democrats. So enviros worry that concessions to this bloc could ultimately result in a deal in which coal plants suffer no real penalties for the carbon they pump into the atmosphere. “Dirty coal polluters know their days are numbered and are lobbying for the largest piece of the pie they can get,” said Jason Kowalski, policy coordinator at 1Sky. “It goes against the spirit of this legislation to reward the polluters that caused this problem in the first place.”

In addition to Klobuchar and Franken, other Democratic senators signing on to the letter were Carl Levin (Mich.), Debbie Stabenow (Mich.), Russ Feingold (Wis.), Herb Kohl (Wis.), Tom Harkin (Iowa), Byron Dorgan (N.D.), Kent Conrad (N.D.), Roland Burris (Ill.), Sherrod Brown (Ohio), Michael Bennet (Colo.), Mark Udall (Colo.) and Robert Byrd (W.Va.).

(iStockphoto)

WASHINGTON, D.C. — While Senate leaders have reached agreement on a $2 billion extension of the cash-for-clunkers program, many lawmakers are already bracing for a more distant confrontation: The likely debate over how to return that funding to another stimulus program that it came from.

The House last Friday provided a generous lifeline to the wildly popular clunkers program — which grants drivers up to $4,500 to scrap their gas guzzlers for more fuel efficient vehicles — and the Senate is poised to pass that bill Thursday. But there’s a glitch. The proposal steals its funding from a Department of Energy program encouraging the development of renewable energy technologies. That initiative, granted $6 billion under this year’s stimulus bill, provides federal loan guarantees to clean energy projects — including solar, wind and biofuel innovations — in hopes of spurring private investment in those industries. Tens of billions of dollars in loan applications are before the DOE, but the program funding was seen by lawmakers as low-hanging fruit because it wouldn’t be spent until next year, at the earliest.

The saga has created a dilemma for a number of lawmakers who support the cash for clunkers extension but don’t want to pilfer from the loan guarantee program to fund it. “I would hate to see us take money from that source,” Sen. Jeff Bingaman (D-N.M.), who chairs the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, told CNBC on Tuesday. “I hope we can find an alternative.”

They didn’t. Although seven amendments to the House proposal will be offered on the Senate floor Thursday afternoon, none aims to locate a new source of the $2 billion. The Senate plans to vote on final passage later in the day, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) announced Wednesday night.

Indeed, with the House having left town Friday for a five-week vacation, any changes at all to the House-passed bill are unlikely. The reason? If the Senate alters the proposal, then either (1) cash for clunkers will have to forego the additional funds until Congress returns in September, or (2) House lawmakers will have to return from recess to iron out the differences between the two bills. In light of the overwhelming popularity of the program, the former option is a political landmine. And on Wednesday, the office of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) pretty much ruled out the latter scenario. “The House isn’t coming back,” said Pelosi spokesman Brendan Daly, “so that‘s just a dumb idea.”

More likely, the Senate will pass the House bill, and push to replenish the $2 billion loan funding at a later date. Indeed, Democratic leaders have gone out of their way to assure Bingaman and other loan guarantee supporters that the money will be replaced. Shortly after Friday’s House vote, for example, President Obama vowed to work with Congress to replace the funding “down the road.” On the same day, Pelosi promoted the importance of having all $6 billion available for the loan program. And, responding to concerns voiced by Rep. Edward Markey (D-Mass.), House Appropriations Committee Chairman David Obey (D-Wis.) said Democratic leaders “have every intention of restoring these funds.”

But that might be easier said than done. With the Democrats hoping to pass a health reform agenda tickling the $1 trillion mark, finding ways to pay for another $2 billion program won’t be easy. And in the wake of spending hundreds of billions of dollars salvaging the economy, many in Congress have lost their tolerance for deficit spending. This is true not only in the eyes of conservative deficit hawks, but also some Democrats as well. Sen. Claire McCaskill (D-Mo.), for example, had hinged her support for cash for clunkers on a single mantra: No new spending. On her Twitter account, the Missouri Democrat said Monday that she “may support” the addition funding –”if it is $ already appropriated for stimulus.”

A failure to reinstall the “borrowed” $2 billion would spell bad news for the renewable fuels and technologies industries, which are banking on the loan program to jump-start the innovations that might wean the country from its current reliance on foreign oil.

“For the U.S. long-term auto and fuel needs, it seems counterproductive to limit the renewable fuels industry,” Bob Dinneen, president and CEO of the Renewable Fuels Association, said in a statement last week.

Supporters of the loan guarantee program also argue that, even if it lacks the catchy name and political appeal of cash for clunkers, it provides much more bang for the buck. Indeed, each $1 provided under the loan guarantee program is estimated to spur $10 in additional investment and spending.

“$2 billion in the cash for clunkers program results in $2 billion worth of economic activity,” Sam Jaffe, senior research analyst at IDC Energy Insights, a consulting firm, wrote for Greentech Media on Tuesday. “$2 billion in loan guarantees will result in at least $20 billion worth of economic activity, all of which will have to take place on U.S. soil.”

Not that cash for clunkers doesn’t have any environmental or stimulus benefits. On Wednesday, the Department of Transportation released figures revealing that, of the nearly 185,000 transactions prompted by the program, the average fuel efficiency of new purchases is 25.3 miles per gallon, while the average mileage for the trade-ins is 15.8 mpg.

But figures like those have alleviated some lawmakers’ criticisms that the program’s mileage requirements don’t go far enough to encourage the purchase of small, energy efficient vehicles. Sens. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) and Susan Collins (R-Maine), for example, had vowed to oppose any new funding unless the mileage thresholds were made more stringent. On Monday, however, the lawmakers backed off of their threat.

“The original intent of the ‘clunkers’ program was to encourage people to buy more fuel efficient vehicles, and the data so far tells us that’s exactly what’s happening,” Feinstein said in a statement announcing her support.

Still, there is growing recognition that, as a long-term environmental strategy, the DOE’s loan program will have much greater effect. “It is not appropriate for us to take money to do one thing for fuel efficiency,” Pelosi said, “out of an account that is designed to do just that.”

Mike Lillis is Congress reporter for the Washington Independent.

Franken knew who the guest was going to be (a controversial choice) and presumably arrived loaded for bear, just in case. Wellstone was likewise prepared to meet the president of the Senate. In Sarah Janecek’s words:

The beginning of Paul Wellstone’s first term in the U.S. Senate was also inelegant. He thrust a cassette tape of Minnesotans expressing opposition to the Gulf War into the hands of then-Vice President Dan Quayle.

Indeed, Wellstone took a while to adjust to Washington, D.C. protocol, as remembered at CounterPunch:

So when Wellstone met Bush in a typical White House pro forma reception line, he used the occasion to urge Bush on three different occasions to spend more time on issues like education and cautioning him against the Persian Gulf War. Of course, Bush was more concerned about fighting the war against Iraq (sound familiar?) and could care less about Wellstone’s issues. After Wellstone violated Bush 41’s sanctimonious White House protocol, Bush was overheard saying, “Who is this chicken shit?”

(WDCpix)

Minnesota’s congressional delegation spent a lot of time discussing health care this week, but there were other issues to deal with. Railroads, grasslands, student loans and peace in the Middle East all garnered attention from Minnesota’s members of Congress.

Rep. Tim Walz is working to secure $260 million in the federal Transportation Re-authorization Bill to route the Dakota, Minnesota & Eastern Railroad south of Rochester. One concern is DM&E’s proximity to the Mayo Clinic and the potentially hazardous materials the line brings close to the hospital complex. The line would also help connect passenger rail to the proposed Minneapolis-to-Chicago high-speed rail.

“We think this project … borders on a project of national interest, of national priority,” Walz said.

Rep. John Kline railed against a plan to to abolish the Federal Family Education Loan Program and end subsidies for private student loan lenders by folding the program into the federal government.

“I have to ask: Is there any industry not on the verge of federalization?” said Kline who is the ranking Republican on the House Education and Labor Committee.

“We’ve already seen the federal government step in and take control of banks, insurance companies and even iconic American auto companies,” Kline said. “The speed with which Democrats are orchestrating a full government takeover of our classrooms and communities is astonishing,” he added.

Rep. Betty McCollum announced on Tuesday that she had secured $400,000 for energy efficiency upgrades for the city of Oakdale. The city will install a cost-saving geothermal heat pump system and light-emitting diode lamps.

McCollum also announced a $900,000 grant on Thursday for Twin Cities middle schools called “Generator Go Green” that will boost energy efficiency, student volunteerism and science learning at disadvantaged schools.

Rep. Keith Ellison is trying to secure $750,000 for a light-rail hub in Minneapolis’ Warehouse District and a light-rail line or rapid bus transit line through north Minneapolis to the northwest suburbs called the Bottineau Transitway.

Ellison also introduced a corporate governance bill that directs publicly held companies to set up independent oversight boards for risk management and executive compensation.

“Runaway executive pay and weak corporate boards were two key ingredients in the current financial crisis,” Ellison said in a statement on Wednesday. “Ensuring that investors have a voice on executive pay packages and that boards are independent, strong and qualified is critical to restoring confidence in the way our companies are run.”

Rep. Michele Bachmann is holding a press conference on health care on Friday with other Republican congresswomen.

“The press conference will also be attended by working mothers who will share personal stories about how the Democrats’ health care legislation will hurt women and affect their day-to-day lives,” the group said in a statement Thursday.

Rep. Collin Peterson is working to ban certain kinds of credit default swaps, specifically those that contributed to the worst economic downturn since the Great Depression, but large corporations are balking at the idea.

Peterson is urging the Department of Agriculture to change incentives that allow farmers to tear up grasslands to increase yields, a problem he says is exacerbated by the federal government.

Peterson also defended his work on climate change legislation, specifically cap-and-trade for which he has begun to take heat in his district.

“I decided to get involved and work with my colleagues in Congress to be sure that agriculture and rural America had a seat at the table when this climate change legislation was written. As a result, we were able to amend several important provisions that made the bill a better deal for agriculture and rural America.

Rep. James Oberstar got pressure from the online poker players’ lobby to vote to make online poker legal and regulated.

Oberstar was praised this week for his advocacy of bicycling and bike trails. “You get on a bike and you can go anywhere,” Oberstar told the Hill.

Oberstar’s advocacy for transportation, especially sustainable transportation, was praised by Transportation for America, a smart growth transportation lobby.

Sen. Amy Klobuchar introduced Miguel Humberto Diaz at his nomination hearings for U.S. ambassador to the Vatican on Wednesday. She called the St. John’s University/College of St. Benedict theology professor “a gifted theologian, a respected scholar, a natural teacher and a dedicated bridge-builder. He knows and loves America, and he knows and loves the Catholic Church.”

Klobuchar held a hearing on metal on Wednesday at the Senate Judiciary Committee’s Subcommittee on Crime and Drugs.

“Metal theft has become a serious nationwide problem with potentially dangerous and far-reaching consequences because of the threat it poses to public safety and our critical infrastructures,” she said in a statement. “We need a nationwide metal theft prevention strategy, so we can combat, prosecute and prevent metal theft crimes.”

Sen. Al Franken’s office is holding open meetings around the state.

Franken also met with Jewish leaders and fellow senators on Wednesday to discuss peace in the Middle East.

A preliminary artist's rendering of the plant, via BigStoneII.com

Despite a metro-area city backing out of the project, representatives for the proposed Big Stone II power-generation facility say they remain optimistic about  the plant’s future, while opponents are still insistent that the new plant will mean dirty power for the Dakotas and Minnesota.

The proposed coal-fired plant, to be located in northeast South Dakota, would generate between 500 and 580 megawatts of electricity. Five utilities are backing the project, including western Minnesota’s Otter Tail Power and the Central Minnesota Power Agency out of Blue Earth. The project is called Big Stone II because it is a major expansion of an existing facility of the same name near Milbank, S.D.

The municipal utility for Elk River, a western suburb of Minneapolis, has declined participation in the project, citing that taking part could carry considerable risk. “We have to commit a lot of money to something that’s not built,” said city utility board chair John Dietz. “They were asking us to commit $3.4 million by September for our share of the research-and-development costs. They’re going to have a go/no-go vote in September of this year, and next year we would be required to put up more money for construction.”

Dietz said that the ratepayers for the utility would be on the hook if the plant didn’t happen.

Elk River’s decision was the target of Twin Cities area activists who urged supporters to call Elk River officials asking them to turn down the project. At the recent meeting of the Elk River city council and utilities board, council members expressed no dissatisfaction with using coal-generated power, but questioned the price tag the utility would have to commit to the project. The utilities board had previously voted not to recommend the project, and the city council took no action, effectively killing Elk River’s participation.

A spokesman for the Big Stone II, Dan Sharp, said the project can continue without Elk River’s participation. “We could increase the scope of the project to 580 or 600 megawatts, if others were willing to come into the project,” he said. With the number of utilities that are on board, the project will probably be 500 megawatts.

Sharp said that all of the project’s partners are trying to secure their shares of the financing in anticipation of a September meeting of the partners, adding that construction is still slated for 2010, possibly starting as early as May.

Sharp says one factor that could be a benefit to this project would be if so-called cap-and-trade legislation becomes a reality. Then, Big Stone II would be about 20 percent more efficient than the existing facilities and would be in line to receive credits that could be traded on the open market.

The plant's proposed location, just over the Minnesota border (BigStoneII.com)

But, critics of the project contend the project will generate dangerous and antiquated coal-based power when other alternatives are becoming more viable in the region. The Northstar chapter of the Sierra Club, which counts Minnesotans in its numbers, has been active in opposing the expansion project. Northstar member Rich Felming said the project is largely past the point of any significant public input. He found it encouraging that Elk River declined to participate.

”We’re always trying to get letters to the editor in to make people aware of the hazards of this proposal,” Felming said.

In addition to his concern that the plant will create several million tons more of carbon dioxide emissions that could contribute to global warming, Felming has a more personal stake in the project: “I run a part-time business where I make fishing products, and I’m concerned about mercury emissions, the sulphur dioxides and the nitrogen dioxides are an issue also for me.”

Felming said he’s very concerned of the impact of this plant on sport fishing. The plant will withdraw cooling water from Big Stone Lake, which is co-managed by Minnesota and South Dakota authorities.

He said he also finds it odd that these utilities are overlooking a prime source of energy. The Dakotas are “the Saudi Arabia of wind power,” Felming said.

But in examining why utilities still seem wedded to coal-generated power, Felming said. “You want to do something you’re familiar with, you always want to keep going down that path.”

Felming added that groups like the Sierra Club and Clean Water Action in South Dakota will try to keep the public focused on what they say is a continued and dangerous reliance on coal for power.

(Wikimedia)

Healthcare reform and the confirmation hearings for Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor dominated headlines this week, but many of Minnesota’s congressional representatives have been busy working on a slew of issues from food-borne illness and hydrocephalus to highway funding and aid to Liberia.

Rep. James Oberstar’s push for an increase in federal highway spending has the support the U.S. Chamber of Commerce — a group that says it wants a gas tax hike to pay for it. “Just damn do it,” Chamber President Thomas Donohue told the Wall Street Journal on Tuesday.

Oberstar says any new stimulus package should go to transportation only. “If there is going to be a second stimulus, it’s going to be highways or nothing else,” Oberstar said.

A man was ticketed for “honking for peace” outside of the office of Rep. John Kline in Burnsville. A peace vigil there encouraged passersby to beep in support, but Burnsville police were fed up with the noise.

Kline also fixed his congressional website.

Rep. Betty McCollum held a health care rally at the State Capitol on Monday and on Tuesday took to the phones, hosting a conference call for reporters on fixing Medicare reimbursement for Minnesota.

Rep. Keith Ellison got a lengthy write-up in the Washington Post on Thursday. On being known as the first Muslim in Congres, he told the Post, “I don’t get tired of talking about it. But my struggle is to maintain a certain amount of breadth. I don’t want to be pigeonholed as only understanding Muslim things, all things Islamic.”

Speaking to Reuters on Monday, Ellison suggested we can all learn from the participation of American Muslims. “Political engagement of the Muslim community is higher than I have ever seen it. The Muslim community has learned the lesson that if you want things to change for you in America, you have to be involved in the process.”

Ellison also announced a $400,000 green jobs initiative to be based in Minneapolis’ north side.

Rep. Michele Bachmann introduced legislation to cut the U.S. Census down to four questions.

Bachmann also introduced a resolution designating September as National Hydrocephalus Awareness Month, urging more attention to the often debilitating condition.

Rep. Tim Walz is sponsoring a bill to stop members of Congress from “insider trading.” The “Stop Trading on Congressional Knowledge Act” is moving through committees and would ban Congress members from profiting from inside information gained in Congress. Walz is also pushing a pair of wind energy bills.

Rep. Erik Paulsen earned praise from Minnesota’s Liberian community for working to secure aid to that country.

The freshman Congress member is also accepting applications for pages.

A bill to beef up the Food and Drug Administration’s role in food safety issues faces opposition by Big Ag — and Rep. Collin Peterson. “I’m a little skeptical of the FDA to have the knowledge base to be on the farm,” he said. “It’s just not a sensible thing. They just don’t have the people do to this, and the people they do have don’t understand.”

Food safety advocates say a panel on the bill in Peterson’s House Agriculture Committee was stacked — of 11 witnesses, only one represented consumers and victims of food-borne illness.

Photo: bachmann.house.gov

U.S. Rep. Michele Bachmann says “people need to melt the phone lines” of their representatives in Washington, D.C. over the next two weeks to stop legislation on health care and energy. If the bills pass, Bachmann predicts a dire future. “We’ve seen the end of this movie,” she warned Thursday on WCCO-AM (audio).

“Seminal bills” now before Congress could alter America for 30 years to come, said Bachmann. Cap-and-trade legislation will “double our electric bills every month,” she said. Gas prices will reach $5 to 6 per gallon. Private insurance will be outlawed. In 39 states, income tax rates will top 50 percent.

WCCO host Michele Tafoya asked Bachmann: What if your own phone lines melt from people who support the bills? Bachmann said she speaks to thousands of people in her district every week via “telephone town hall meetings” during which she “educates” constituents about issues like health care.

In any case, “I am hearing the opposite,” Bachmann said.

It wasn’t Bachmann’s only radio appearance of the day. Earlier she told the nationally syndicated “Dennis Miller Show” that private health care will be extinct within five years if the current House bill passes. “What you’re going to have is a government plan and a federal bureau to decide what you’re going to get if you get anything at all,” Bachmann told Miller.

(WDCpix)

This week Minnesota’s members of Congress went back to work after the July 4 break, except for Sen. Al Franken who was showing up — finally — for the first time. Rep. Keith Ellison put forward a credit reform bill, Rep. Betty McCollum announced her plan to expand the Peace Corps, and Republicans criticized the Democrats’ energy and stimulus policies. Here’s how the week shook down:

Rep. Keith Ellison introduced legislation to reform credit rating agencies on Wednesday. “When these agencies put their mark of approval on complex products they confer a legitimacy that may not actually exist,” he said. “We’ve learned of instances where credit rating agencies have given top ratings to products backed by dubious mortgages and other loans. Under current law there was really no one looking over the agencies’ shoulders to make sure that they were making reasonable assumptions or had even a basic understanding of the risks they were assessing.”

Rating agencies are currently subject only to limited oversight by the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), but are critical elements of the financial system.

Rep. Michele Bachmann sent a video to people attending the Tea Parties over the weekend; she was appointed to the Congressional Coalition on Adoption Institute’s Advisory Board; and she says that President Obama is destroying the American dream — or, rather, the American dreams of Chrysler auto dealers.

Rep. Betty McCollum is gearing up for a Congressional softball game. Proceeds from the game be donated to the Young Survival Coalition (YSC), a group that works to educate and support young women living with breast cancer.

McCollum also spoke passionately on the House floor on Thursday about expanding the Peace Corps.

[T]oday the Peace Corps, one of the most successful foreign policy initiatives, is at a crossroads. Peace Corps is not capable of meeting the demand of Americans of all ages who want to serve… We have an opportunity here today in this moment to reinvigorate Peace Corps for the next new century, but it’s going to take leadership from Congress. The President’s request simply was not enough, even though the President does propose to double, increase and fully fund Peace Corps out into the years.

Rep. James Oberstar is still pushing a $450 billion funding bill and $50 billion for high-speed rail. Also, Oberstar was in New York on Friday with Obama’s transportation secretary, Ray LaHood, to mark the 50th anniversary of the St. Lawrence Seaway, which is crucial to Duluth’s status as a seaport.

Rep. Erik Paulsen talked to the Eden Prairie News about the cap-and-trade energy bill working its way through Congress. “If we’re going to be serious about securing our energy future, we need to focus on having nuclear energy be a part of that,” he said.

Rep. John Kline penned an editorial for the website “America’s Right” slamming Obama’s stimulus policies. “Republicans are committed to pro-growth policies that will get our economy back on track without saddling future generations with unmanageable debt,” he wrote. “We offered a stimulus plan that would have created twice the jobs for half the price.”

But Media Matters says his statement doesn’t hold water: “[T]he GOP got its ‘twice the jobs’ claim by misusing a formula in an academic paper that they later admitted they weren’t able to understand in the first place.”

Sens. Al Franken and Amy Klobuchar split their votes on immigration policy, specifically on the border fence between the United States and Mexico. Franken voted against it. Klobuchar voted for it.

One of Franken’s first tasks as senator was to sign on to the Employee Free Choice Act, a pledge he’s made throughout his campaign. “I just became a cosponsor of my first bill in the Senate, the Employee Free Choice Act,” he said on Tuesday.

Hiawatha Light Rail Line, Minneapolis

WASHINGTON — As Senate lawmakers launch new efforts to curb the nation’s greenhouse gas emissions, some key members have joined local transportation officials and environmentalists to ask a seemingly relevant question: Where’s the commitment to public transit?

House lawmakers last month passed a proposal designed to tackle climate change by creating a cap-and-trade system to limit greenhouse emissions and generate revenues for green initiatives. Yet — while billions of dollars went to subsidize the transition of the major polluting industries into the new system — only one percent was dedicated to public transportation projects.

That arrangement, many experts and lawmakers contend, falls well short of what the country will need to reduce the vehicle miles that contribute so heavily to the world’s greenhouse emissions. Indeed, the United States, which represents roughly 5 percent of the world’s population, emits more than one-fifth of its greenhouse gases — with 28 percent coming from transportation.

Now, as Senate Democrats are preparing to unveil their own sweeping climate-change proposal, a growing chorus of voices is calling for an increase in public-transit funding to eliminate the need for so much additional driving.

“Transportation accounts for nearly one-third of our emissions, and yet it does not appear to be on Congress’s radar screen as one third of the solution,” Sen. Robert Menendez (D-N.J.), chairman of the Senate Banking Committee’s subpanel on transportation, said during a hearing on the topic Tuesday. A failure to provide more funding for clean transit, Menendez added, would represent a failure to tackle climate change adequately.

He has a difficult road ahead. While the House passed its climate bill last month, Senate approval is much less certain. Not only would Democratic supporters need to rally the 60 votes required to defeat a Republican filibuster, but the legislative calendar is already being squeezed by a looming debate over health care reform that’s certain to be long-drawn. Many observers question whether there will be time left to tackle another proposal as controversial as the cap-and-trade legislation.

Meanwhile, the Obama administration is urging Congress to abandon thoughts of a new transportation bill this year, which would offer another avenue for new public transit funding. Instead, the administration is pushing for an 18-month extension of the current funding blueprint.

Not that Washingon policymakers have done nothing to tackle transportation-related emissions this year. In May, the Obama administration adopted new regulations forcing automakers to increase the fuel efficiencies of new vehicles nationwide. That, experts contend, is a step in the right direction, but it won’t alone address the problem of carbon emissions if the volume of traffic increases simultaneously.

Michael Replogle, founder of the Institute for Transportation and Development Policy, told lawmakers Tuesday that, even as cars have become more efficient and fuels cleaner in recent decades, greenhouse gas emissions related to transportation have grown steadily over the same span.

“Our current policy framework guiding the development of surface transportation infrastructure in the U.S. is not designed to take into account [greenhouse gas] emissions,” Replogle said.

The comments came on the same day that the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, headed by Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.), held a climate-change hearing of its own. Boxer is currently crafting legislation to accompany the House-passed bill. Yet, as Menendez was quick to point out, Tuesday’s EPW gathering featured officials from the departments of Energy, Agriculture, Interior and the Environmental Protection Agency, but no one from the Department of Transportation.

Ignoring mass transit solutions, according to many experts, is an oversight that could vastly limit the emission-reducing capabilities of whatever proposal eventually comes out of Boxer’s committee.

Clinton Andrews, professor of urban policy at Rutgers University, told lawmakers Tuesday that, according to a recent New Jersey study he conducted, per capita greenhouse emissions decrease between 10 and 15 percent in places where residents have access to rail service — figures that increase as population densities do also. Lawmakers hoping to tackle climate change, he said, will be hard-pressed to do so without committing greater resources to similar projects.

“The problem of global warming is large enough that it requires sustained efforts on multiple fronts,” Andrews said, “and transit is definitely one of those fronts.”

Not that Tuesday’s debate was all one-sided. Randal O’Toole, a fellow at the Cato Institute, told lawmakers that decades worth of public transit funding has done nothing to convince Americans to give up their cars. Public transit agencies, he said, “tend to build urban monuments” that can’t survive without government subsidies. Instead, O’Toole argued, Congress should concentrate on reducing emissions from cars and trucks.

“Transit is going to be the culprit,” O’Toole said, “not the savior.”

Menendez countered by pointing out that the last transportation bill Congress approved contained $200 billion for highway construction.

“That’s a subsidy,” Menendez said, “but we don’t seem to think of it in that respect.”

The House approved its climate change bill at the end of last month by a slim margin of 219 to 212, with 44 Democrats voting against the bill. But passage didn’t come without first offering billions of dollars to help some of the country’s biggest polluters adapt to the new pollution limits. Indeed, under the bill’s cap-and-trade system, 15 percent of the value of the emission allowances would go initially to industries like steel and paper, 5 percent to coal-burning power plants and 4 percent to oil refineries and electric utilities. Public transit projects, meanwhile, would get 1 percent, or roughly $537 million.

The original proposal, sponsored by Reps. Henry Waxman (D-Calif.) and Edward Markey (D-Mass.), contained no money for low-carbon public transit at all. The 1-percent provision was added at the last minute after negotiations with Rep. Earl Blumenauer (D-Ore.), who introduced legislation earlier in the year that would allocate 10 percent of emission-cap revenues to public transit.

Blumenauer spokeswoman Erin Allweiss said Tuesday that the 10-percent proposal remains very much alive.

Some experts caution, however, that dumping money into public transit without also adopting complementary land-use strategies will do little to reduce either urban congestion or greenhouse gas emissions. The reason is simple: A bus that caters to a sprawling cul-de-sac community won’t carry nearly the number of passengers as the same bus traveling to areas of higher-density. And a bus with empty seats is even more inefficient than a car with the same.

Christopher Cabaldon, mayor of the City of West Sacramento, warned lawmakers that comprehensive planning is vital. If public transit doesn’t arrive before communities and businesses are well established, he said, the strategy is sure to fail.

“If you don’t have the transit, people get used to cars and they demand … that you start building more parking lots,” Cabaldon said. “The changes that you want to achieve cannot be done by building the transit afterwards.”

Mike Lillis is Congress reporter for the Washington Independent.