Rep. John Shimkus

WASHINGTON — As Democrats met in the White House today discussing a climate change bill, Rep. John Shimkus, R-Collinsville, and other House Republicans countered with a fresh campaign against the legislation.

The American Energy Solutions Group, which Shimkus co-chairs, is made up of House Republicans and held what amounted to an unofficial congressional hearing today, interviewing former political leaders, political consultants and manufacturing representatives opposed to the carbon regulation in the Democrats’ Waxman-Markey energy bill.

With no supporters of the bill present, witnesses and members of Congress echoed arguments against the draft: that it will drive up energy prices, send jobs overseas and disproportionately hurt coal-dependent states like Missouri and Illinois.

The event marked the first steps to a Republican alternative, Shimkus said.

“To develop a positive plan, you have to know the failures of the current plan,” Shimkus said, “and I think those were exposed today.”

The group will host similar meetings in Indiana, Pennsylvania and California later this month with a formal alternative likely coming soon after, Shimkus said, adding that Rep. Joe Barton, R-Texas, is also close to completing a draft.

Many Republicans argue that the Waxman-Markey bill is dishonest, preferring to call its “cap and trade” system of regulating carbon a “cap and tax” system. Republican leaders pointed at the closed door meetings at the White House as further proof.

“If you want to tax carbon emissions, the simplest most cost-efficient and most transparent means would be a carbon tax but the liberal Democrats are unwilling to go in that direction because the public will really know what the cost will be,” Shimkus said.

But for a group whose name includes “solutions,” environmentalists saw a lack of alternatives coming from the dissenters.

“Their real agenda is to derail efforts in Congress to build a clean energy economy that creates millions of clean energy jobs and protects our environment,” said Tony Iallonardo, senior communications manager for the National Wildlife Federation.

Rep. Mike Pence, R-Ind., who chairs the group, admitted that the first priority is to kill the Markey-Waxman bill, or as Pence called it “an economic declaration of war on the Midwest by liberals on Capitol Hill.”

General aspects of the Republican plan mentioned today included making energy independence a higher priority and funding clean coal research, like the proposed pilot project FutureGen, which will be built near Mattoon, Ill., if approved.