Monday, April 26, 2010, 8:40am PDT | Modified: April 27, 2010, 2:38 PM

A bipartisan bill in partisan times?

by Kristen A. Sheeran
Economics for Equity and the Environment Network

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The passage of the health care bill with nary a single Republican vote, and the emerging tea party movement steeped in populist distrust of "big government", raises a strategic challenge for supporters of a national policy to address climate change: Is there a climate bill that is capable of getting through Congress with bipartisan support?

The answer is yes, at least for one bill. Senators Maria Cantwell (D-WA) and Susan Collins (R-ME) have proposed theCLEAR (Carbon Limits and Energy for America's Renewal) Act, which could potentially break the U.S. climate policy impasse.

CLEAR has won a favorable reception from a broad swath of the political spectrum, including ExxonMobil, Friends of the Earth, AARP, the American Enterprise Institute, former U.S. Labor Secretary Robert Reich, Alaska's Republican Senator Lisa Murkowski, MoveOn.org, as well as independent economists from universities and research centers across the country.

How did CLEAR win wide-ranging support from the public and from lawmakers from both sides of the aisle? It is based on a common-sense approach to capping carbon emissions that works, is transparent, and delivers tangible benefits to the majority.

CLEAR caps carbon emissions, but auctions 100 percent of the permits, rather than just giving those permits to the coal-burning electricity industry. Auctioning permits is the approach widely favored by economists, for it generates the revenues needed to help fund the transition from the fossil-fueled economy.

CLEAR returns 75 percent of the revenues from selling permits directly to the public, in the form of equal per-capita payments that households can literally take straight to the bank. Households will still spend more on energy because carbon emissions are capped, but for the majority of U.S. households in every state, the 'dividend' they receive will more than offset their increased energy costs. The more energy a household saves, the greater the boost to their household income.

CLEAR devotes the remaining 25 percent of auction revenues to investments in energy efficiency, clean energy, climate change mitigation and adaptation, and assistance for regions and sectors hurt by the transition from the fossil-fueled economy.

CLEAR offers a refreshing alternative to the politics of special interest giveaways which have plagued the health care bill and previous legislative attempts to reign in the carbon-economy, such as the Waxman Markey climate bill that passed the House last June before stalling in the Senate. The Waxman Markey bill delivered the emissions reductions the U.S. sorely needs, and it offered adequate protections for the lowest-income households. But it mostly expected the public to wait on line behind the fossil fuel industry before it could get its share of the carbon revenues many years out.

If the Senate votes on a comprehensive climate and energy bill this year, it will hopefully combine the best elements of CLEAR and the Waxman Markey bill. From a climate perspective, neither approach is perfect, but both can head us in the right direction toward a clean-energy future. From a social equity perspective, CLEAR is the more progressive alternative to the Waxman Markey bill.

Yet neither bill is worth anything if it can't get passed Congress. From the perspective of which bill is politically more feasible, the answer — like so much in Washington these days — is anything but clear.

Kristen A. Sheeran, PhD, is an economist who directs Economics for Equity and the Environment Network , a national network of economists developing new arguments for environmental protection, based out of Ecotrust in Portland.