Republicans see opportunity in U.S. climate bill fight

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Republicans in the U.S. Congress, who warn that climate change legislation is the "biggest job-killing bill" ever, see a bright side: Some people who lose their jobs could be Democrat lawmakers who vote for the bill.

Holding minority status in both the Senate and House of Representatives after a disastrous showing in the 2006 and 2008 elections, Republican leaders think that Democrats might be writing a prescription for a Republican comeback in 2010 by passing a bill instead of curing an energy and environmental problem.

"If the Republicans can frame it as, 'Oh, the Democrats are once again just trying to raise your taxes, this time with a hidden tax on energy', then that will probably have substantial appeal to the electorate, particularly if we are still in the throes of a recession," said Robert Stavins, head of the Harvard Environmental Economics Program.

On Friday, the House narrowly approved a bill to impose deep reductions over the next four decades on industrial emissions of carbon dioxide and other gases that cause global warming. Debate over the bill, which could raise energy prices, comes as the United States is in the depths of an economic recession.

President Barack Obama has called on the Senate, where the proposed law faces a much more difficult path, to act quickly as well. But a vote there is still a long way off and might not even happen this year.

As the House was wrapping up its debate of what many are calling the most significant environmental bill in U.S. history, House Republican leader John Boehner called it "the defining bill for this Congress."

Three days earlier, in a memo to fellow Republicans, Boehner linked the vote on the climate bill to the November, 2010, congressional elections and warned: "Democrats who vote for it do so at their own peril."

DIFFICULT BALANCE

Boehner also has called the legislation "the biggest job-killing bill" ever, an argument that analysts say may have appeal with voters.

Democrats, with their big majorities in Congress, are trying to balance the demands of socially liberal activists on both coasts versus blue collar workers in the center of the country, said Paul Sracic, head of the political science department at Youngstown State University in Ohio.

"Voters in the Midwest who decide (presidential) elections, elected Barack Obama and the Democrats to fix the economy, not the environment," Sracic said. "Republicans are smart to portray this as a jobs-killing measure."

But if the economy improves significantly before the 2010 election, "I don't think anything Republicans say is going to catch on," Sracic said.

"If it doesn't improve ... Republicans will say, 'See, they didn't focus on the economy and jobs and were more worried about appeasing liberals' by passing a climate change bill," he added.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, the Democrat who fought to keep the climate change bill on a fast-track toward passage, also talked about jobs. But she had job creation in mind.

"Remember these four words for what this legislation means: jobs, jobs, jobs and jobs. Let's vote for jobs," Pelosi said on Friday, exhorting lawmakers to vote for the bill and the economic opportunity Democrats hope the climate bill brings.

Pelosi's formula for getting the bill passed in the House protected many Democrats from putting their political careers on the line.

The bill passed by a narrow 219-212 vote, with 44 Democrats voting "no." Many of them represent districts in Midwestern and southern states, where the most clean energy progress would have to be made by coal-fired utilities and other energy intensive industries.

The bill has also split the religious community -- an important constituency in many states.

While some religious groups have banded together to lobby for the legislation, some conservative religious activists are mobilizing against it.

"The idea that you're going to have the biggest tax hike in American history in the middle of a severe recession is economic hara-kiri, it's just insane," said Nashville-based Dr. Richard Land, a leading figure in the social conservative movement, on his nationally syndicated radio show on Saturday.

(Additional reporting by Ed Stoddard in Dallas, editing by Philip Barbara)