Tucked amid today's marathon Senate agriculture debate is an amendment that, even if it fails to win 60 votes, gives environmentalists a spot of good news as they rush into battle with House Republicans over new plans to handcuff U.S. EPA.

The amendment by Sen. Patty Murray (D-Wash.) to her chamber's farm bill calls on the Obama administration to craft, "as soon as practicable," a report on how January's scheduled first round of $1.2 trillion in budget cuts would impact both the military and domestic agencies such as EPA, the Energy Department and the Interior Department.

Murray's proposal is a Democratic counterweight to a bid from Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) that would only analyze the Pentagon impacts of the automatic cuts, and the splintering of moderate support for both amendments could well leave neither with the votes to pass. Yet conservationists who have few if any details on how "sequestration" would affect U.S. natural resources spending saw a positive sign in the emergence of a political narrative -- at least among Democrats -- that includes the cuts' effect on their priorities.

"It's an important shift of the framing," Friends of the Earth fiscal analyst Ben Schreiber said. "Right now all we're hearing about is 'defense, defense, defense, security, security, security.' The defense industry has done a great job of getting their message out. Those of us who work with the poor, the environment, children, we didn't seem to have much of a voice in this discussion up until now."

Schreiber acknowledged, however, that his group's support of the Murray amendment took a back seat this week to parrying the House GOP's multi-front onslaught against White House environmental policy, from a new bill on the floor that would block EPA rules to a fiscal 2013 spending plan that pares the agency's budget to levels last seen in 1998.

That dynamic mirrors one that some environmentalists observed last year during the dramatic linkage of government funding to the nation's debt limit. As activists trained their fire on GOP attempts to attach riders restricting EPA and DOE policy to the fiscal 2012 framework, they had less time to gauge the full impact of what became a $917 billion cut to discretionary spending over the next 10 years (E&E Daily, July 28, 2011).

"As a result of the many challenges our community has been facing," Wilderness Society conservation funding director Alan Rowsome said, "we probably haven't spent the time we need to spend looking forward and helping figure out" how next year's estimated nine-figure cuts to both defense and domestic programs would hit EPA, DOE and Interior.

In the second half of the year, Rowsome added, greens should focus more attention on gauging how the scheduled $1.2 trillion cut would affect federal energy responsibilities from air quality to oil and gas leasing. "Some guidance on impacts would need to be put out by the relevant agencies, as opposed to folks assuming 'this is what would happen,'" he said. "Having that real-life impact would be important."

The Natural Resources Defense Council's legislative director, Scott Slesinger, said that in the coming months, greens would escalate their calls for "a balanced approach" to the budget cuts alongside other nonprofit groups that stand to see priorities slashed next year. "The environmental community is working with broad-based groups to address the devastating impact of sequestration on what people essentially expect from their government, things like clean air, untainted food, police protection, notice when tornadoes are coming -- things government is doing that you don't notice until it doesn't."

If lawmakers prove reluctant to examine the sequester's practical footprint, their motives may be grounded in their recent appetite for eleventh-hour crisis aversion. Although few Washington, D.C., veterans have said as much aloud, more than a few predict a defusing of the automatic cuts when Congress returns to session after Election Day.

The White House appeared to bet on that outcome when it first reached the sequestration deal with Congress, telling reporters that nine-figure cuts next year "would be unacceptable to many Republicans and Democrats alike -- creating pressure for a bipartisan agreement" (E&E Daily, Aug. 1, 2011).

Murray described her amendment in a statement this week as a means to spur lawmakers "toward a balanced and bipartisan replacement to the automatic cuts that both Democrats and Republicans agree are bad policy" by impressing on them "exactly how the administration would enact sequestration if we can't come to a deal."

Click here to read the Murray amendment.