House appropriators are expected to quickly approve a bill this morning that would slash U.S. EPA's regulatory activities in fiscal 2012, placing a stay on its greenhouse gas program.

The Interior, Environment and Related Agencies appropriations bill would place a one-year moratorium on the agency's plans to ratchet down heat-trapping emissions from stationary sources, such as utilities and oil refineries. The subcommittee is likely to approve it today along strict party lines.

But while the measure subcommittee Chairman Mike Simpson (R-Idaho) rolled out yesterday is expected to meet with little resistance in the Republican-controlled House, House Democrats take some comfort in knowing it will almost certainly hit a roadblock in the Senate, where Democrats will oppose everything from the bill's steep cuts for EPA and the Interior Department to its curbs on EPA regulations.

"This is a political, ideological statement," said Rep. Jim Moran of Virginia, the top Democrat on the Interior and Environment Appropriations Subcommittee. "It is not a piece of legislation that is intended to be compromised and enacted."

"I'm concerned about every bad proposal that moves through the House, but if it moves through the House -- which is not yet a sure thing -- we still have the Senate and the president who will reject it," said Energy and Commerce ranking member Henry Waxman (D-Calif.).

Simpson said months ago that he expected his fellow Republicans to offer amendments to the subcommittee's bill that would place a moratorium on EPA's greenhouse gas program, but he headed them off yesterday by including the language in the underlying bill.

"It was going to be put there one way or another. So why not put it in the bill?" he said.

Moran said Simpson's move may be intended to ensure that the subcommittee passed the bill. While a few of its Republican members might vote against the whole appropriations package if it lacked an EPA greenhouse gas rider, Moran said, the overall membership of the panel might not have voted for the rider as an amendment.

Adding the language to the underlying bill simplified the process, Moran said.

"There may be some additional amendments offered on the floor, but there is little that has been left out other than to completely eliminate EPA," he said.

But Rep. Tom Cole (R-Okla.), a member of the subcommittee, said he was very supportive of the overall bill, including the greenhouse gas language.

"I think the Congress has spoken pretty emphatically on this, and the idea that we're going to try to do through regulation what we won't do through legislation I think rubs that committee the wrong way," Cole said.

Rep. Ed Whitfield (R-Ky.), who heads the authorizing subcommittee responsible for EPA climate rules, said he also supported Simpson's greenhouse gas rider.

Whitfield noted that the Senate has yet to pass a bill (H.R. 910) that cleared the House, to permanently strip EPA of its authority to regulate greenhouse gas emissions.

"We like to move things through the authorizing committees, but if appropriators want to do it -- and we've talked to some of them about it -- then we want to encourage them to do it," he said. "Because EPA is moving so quickly and so broadly that we believe we need every opportunity to try and slow some of it down."

The first of EPA's Clean Air Act rules for carbon dioxide took effect in January, and more are set to phase in this month and over the next two years. The appropriations rider would prevent EPA from implementing current rules and drafting future ones.

Environmental and labor groups hit back yesterday, saying that slashing regulations would hurt public health. The Natural Resources Defense Council said that policy riders like the prohibition on EPA's climate program could do even more damage than the skimpy spending numbers found elsewhere in the bill.

The measure would provide $7.1 billion for EPA, about $1.5 billion below this year's levels.

"Worse than making deep budget cuts, the bill is chock full of gratuitous policy riders that are unprecedented in number and scope," said Scott Slesinger, NRDC's legislative director. "They have no place in a budget -- or anywhere else."

Adam Kolton, executive director of the National Wildlife Federation's National Advocacy Center, in a statement called the bill a "manifesto" of anti-environmentalism.

He said it was "riddled with special interest policy riders and pet provisions and unprecedented cuts to virtually every program that protects the air we breathe, the water we drink and the public lands and wildlife that we cherish."

Reporter Manuel Quinones contributed.