As I was updating the WashingtonWatch.com Twitter feed just now, I felt obligated to point out a non-typo: H.R. 2454, The American Clean Energy and Security Act would cost about $12,000 per U.S. family.

It’s being debated on the House floor right now.

(That doesn’t mean you should necessarily be for it or against. Just aware of it.)

At least that’s how H.R. 2768 would have it.

Who knows what that means. The bill says, simply, “For purposes of Federal law, nuclear energy is hereby declared to be clean energy, and any provision of Federal law relating to clean energy shall be considered to include nuclear energy.”

Okee dokee then. Nuclear = clean.

Dan Neil of the L.A. Times writes about his alternative proposal for spending on federal energy programs:

[T]he U.S. Department of Energy budgetary request for fiscal 2010 is $65 billion, including nearly $40 billion from the National Economic Recovery Act. The 2010 Toyota Prius will probably come in around $23,000 when prices are announced later this spring. Since we’ve got the federal checkbook open, what if we took $46 billion and bought everybody Priuses? Would that help?

Why yes, yes it would.

By my calculations, $46 billion would buy about 2 million Priuses. Assuming we use them to replace cars that get 15 mpg and assuming an average driving year of 15,000 miles – and assuming the junkers are retired out of the fleet – these 2 million Priuses would save about 700 gallons of gas per car, or 1.4 billion gallons a year.

. . .

Other advantages would include a significant reduction in vehicle-related greenhouse gas emissions. Such a scheme wouldn’t really hurt our balance of trade, either, since Toyota would have to subcontract Prius assembly to U.S facilities to meet demand.

So, here at the blueprint stage, it’s a win-win-win. Not sure that a federal Prius promotion program would actually get implemented the way he imagines, but it’s fun to roll around different ways for solving energy and environmental problems.

I’ll take mine in green.

President-Elect Obama began to sketch his economic recovery plan in his weekly address yesterday. It’s long on spending but short on price tag.

The items he features in the talk include energy, roads and bridges, schools, broadband, and electronic medical records.

Of the items on the list, the energy idea seems to hold the most promise. Says the President-Elect: “[W]e will launch a massive effort to make public buildings more energy-efficient. Our government now pays the highest energy bill in the world. . . . We need to upgrade our federal buildings by replacing old heating systems and installing efficient light bulbs. That won’t just save you, the American taxpayer, billions of dollars each year. It will put people back to work.”

Any government spending “puts people back to work,” of course, but the tax dollars or debt “take people out of work” sooner or later. The trick is to do a better job with the money than people would do investing, spending, or saving their own money, so what’s taken out of the economy more than makes up for itself. Not easily done.

But bringing energy efficiency to the government could lower the price of energy across the board for a long time to come, and it could give consumers and producers a little more breathing room with some truly beneficial effects. It’s the most plausible part of the plan to me, but one can never be sure.

What one can be sure of at this point is that we don’t know how much spending the President-Elect proposes. That’s pretty important to know.

Incidentally, the Obama transition is asking you to share your thoughts.

This morning – this morning – we heard from Jerry Trudell, Energy Independence candidate against incumbent Peter Welch for the at-large congressional seat in Vermont.

He wrote in to point us to his Web site, presumably for inclusion in the Bailout Rogue’s Gallery. Check it out here.

But Welch was returned to office last night.

Improbably, here on the night when election returns are coming in, I’ve decided to write about gas prices. But there’s no time like the present to get back to real policy issues. I’ve had quite enough of all this politics, thank you.

The Omaha World-Herald reported today that gas prices in the Omaha-Council Bluffs area have fallen to $2.00/gallon. “We are just giddy,” says a spokeswoman for the Holiday Plaza Conoco near Interstate 80 in North Platte, according to the paper. That’s cute.

But enough jubilation. It’s time for a life-lesson.

A little less than four months ago, Congress was considering legislation to curtail “speculation” in energy markets because it was supposedly causing high prices. Bills like S. 3268, the Stop Excessive Energy Speculation Act of 2008 and H.R. 6330, the Prevent Unfair Manipulation of Prices (PUMP) Act. (Shoot! With that clever name, it was supposed to pass easily!)

Investors in energy futures do bid up prices when they see shortages in the future but, as we learned from an astute WashingtonWatch.com visitor, this helps to moderate supply and demand. Investors are the messenger about disruptions in markets, not the cause.

Much of the debate about oil speculation was generated by airline industry lobbying using trumped up advocacy groups – one business sector trying to gain advantage over another using government regulation.

Now the gasoline-price shoe is on the other foot. Prices have come back down. (They do at the end of every summer, y’know.) I think it’s time for the airline industry to send “speculators” a thank-you note. Maybe a gift-basket of fruit or something. Soaps and scented candles?

You and me, let’s recognize a few things, like: a) sophisticated lobbies will take advantage of crises and use our government to bash their opponents; 2) What goes up must come down; and, III) you shouldn’t set government policy based on anecdotes or crises, which can reverse themselves in just a few months.

The Internets are seeing much ado today about some remarks Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama made early this year on coal and greenhouse gasses. A snippet is in the video at right. (Ignore the red captions and exclamation marks – if you can!!!!)

Senator Obama describes a carbon cap-and-trade system pretty accurately. He concludes with some provocative language, though: “So if somebody wants to build a coal-fired plant, they can. It’s just that it will bankrupt them because they are going to be charged a huge sum for all that greenhouse gas that’s being emitted.”

A cap-and-trade system is actually supposed to avoid bankrupting anybody by driving the market to discover the most cost-effective ways to reduce greenhouse gasses. This is something Senator Obama recognizes and wants to foster.

That being said, all the carbon cap-and-trade programs we’ve seen so far look to be huge undertakings that will cause significant economic dislocation. And, yes, “significant economic dislocation” means bankruptcies and job losses for some unfortunate businesses and people.

The two most expensive bills proposed in the current Congress are carbon cap-and-trade bills: S. 2191, the America’s Climate Security Act of 2007 (cost: about $17,000 per U.S. family) and S. 3036, the Lieberman-Warner Climate Security Act of 2008 (cost: over $12,000 per U.S. family). Those are big expenses for the nation to absorb.

Ultimately, the answer to the question, “Would a President Obama Bankrupt the Coal Industry?” is . . . : wrong question!

You should decide for yourself whether you want a carbon cap-and-trade program in this country, you should watch what Congress and the next president do, and you should give your opinion to your elected representatives early and often.

Dozens of press releases come out every day on some public policy issue or another. I picked one pretty much at random to write about a couple of months ago. It was an American Trucking Associations release touting the support of a professional truck driver for a piece of legislation. I thought that was a little gimmicky, but it’s far from the worst thing I’ve ever seen in public policy advocacy.

So up went a picture of Tony Sifford and a post about his support for some energy bill or other. (Gosh – remember when energy was the biggest issue going, and not government bailouts and the reeling economy? Those were the days – two months ago.)

Tragically, Tony was killed in an accident a month later.

I’ve been honored to see commenters on my post about his passing offering their condolences to his family and illustrating how Tony Sifford touched their lives. It’s a nice illustration of the value of every life and how we all rely on each other. Even a “random” truck driver from Hillsville, Virginia is a part of our community and someone who we’ll miss when he’s gone.

This would be a nice lesson for the people debating H.R. 6798 to remember. It’s a bill dealing with whether certain cancer diagnoses should be attributed to Agent Orange, and the people debating it right now are being needlessly cruel to one another.

Take a moment out, people, to remember your common bond with one another and the importance we have to one another – in ways you might not realize until it’s too late.

What a shame. A fellow I featured in an early blog post here has passed away.

Tony Sifford was a driver for FedEx Ground out of Hillsville, Virginia, and he was involved in various good causes around trucking (most of which appear to be sponsored by the American Trucking Associations). He worked with ATA to support H.R. 6709, the National Conservation, Environment, and Energy Independence Act.

A commenter tonight on the post featuring Tony noted his recent death in an accident.

It’s an unfortunate tragedy. Condolences to his family, friends, and colleagues. We’re all worse off knowing we’ve lost this good man.

On Tuesday this week, the House passed an energy bill that had been introduced late the night before.

It’s bad practice to introduce a bill and take it to the floor without giving members of Congress and the public a chance to read it, but House Republicans were really howling because they had staged a protest over the fact that the House had not addressed the energy issue before leaving for the August recess.

The bill passed this week is H.R. 6899, the Comprehensive American Energy Security and Consumer Protection Act.

It may come up in the Senate before the adjournment that’s scheduled for the end of this month, but it’s going to be hard to get agreement on something with the intense politics and all the competing bills out there.

Anyway, a preliminary cost estimate has come out, showing savings of a little over $40 per U.S. family should this bill pass. That estimate only includes direct spending and taxes, which would both go down. Discretionary spending (which can be a lot) isn’t included yet. We’ll update you when a full estimate comes out.

In the meantime, the speed with which this bill went through Congress suggests that someone’s idea to solve our energy problems was lightning . . . [rimshot!]

Here’s the current vote on H.R. 6899, the Comprehensive American Energy Security and Consumer Protection Act. Click to vote, comment, learn more, or edit the wiki article about the bill.