Liberal Democrats in the Senate and House today homed in on federal efficiency incentives and a carbon tax, respectively, as effective balms for the nation's long-term fiscal woes.

The nine Senate Democrats who pitched a passel of building and electrical energy-saving provisions aimed at the 12-member "supercommittee" asked to produce a debt-cutting deal by next month, while the nine House Democrats backing a tax that starts at $10 per ton of emitted carbon dioxide put their plan in legislative format. But both camps used similar reasoning in touting their ideas as budgetary winners.

Given that "the federal government is the single largest owner of real property in the United States" and America's "single largest consumer of energy," Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.) wrote to the 12-member deficit panel alongside Environment and Public Works Chairwoman Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) and others, "there are opportunities to reduce government energy costs and put that money instead toward job creation and debt reduction."

The Senate group offered 13 ideas, several of them already endorsed by Energy and Natural Resources Committee members on both sides of the aisle. Among them are allowing federal acquisitions officials to consider efficiency in product purchasing; permitting the government to buy thermal in addition to electric power as part of its renewable energy purchases; and mandating energy retrofits for certain federal buildings.

The liberal senators, which represent a majority of Democrats on the environment panel, did not attach a specific level of savings to their plans. But the House Democrats floating today's carbon tax bill, led by Rep. Pete Stark of California, a senior member of the Ways and Means Committee, plugged their measure as poised to yield more than $2 trillion in revenue to the public over the next decade.

"We have a moral obligation to act to prevent catastrophic climate change and preserve our planet for future generations," Stark said in a statement on his bill, also supported by his party's chief U.S. EPA and Interior Department appropriator, Rep. Jim Moran of Virginia, and Congressional Progressive Caucus co-chief Rep. Raúl Grijalva of Arizona. "The [carbon tax bill] is a first step toward meeting that obligation and creating a sensible tax code that incentivizes innovation, reduces the deficit, and protects families from rising energy costs."

The House legislation would impose its $10-per-ton tax, set to increase by $10 each year until U.S. carbon emissions fall to 80 percent below their 1990 levels, at the point of sale or import for fossil fuels, according to Stark's office. The bulk of resulting revenue would go to consumers in the form of rebates to reduce energy costs, which would very likely jump if such a tax became law.

The chances of such a carbon tax winning approval are meager at best, however, following the collapse of 2009's cap-and-trade climate bill after its repeated condemnation by Republicans and industry interests as a tax by another name.

Yet the prospect of a straightforward carbon tax has won some unlikely support, including an endorsement from Exxon Mobil Corp. CEO Rex Tillerson, who called it preferable to a cap-and-trade system in 2009. More recently, former Congressional Budget Office chief and GOP presidential campaign adviser Douglas Holtz-Eakin has joined a quiet grass-roots communications effort in New Hampshire aimed at helping voters warm to emissions-cutting plans that could be revenue-neutral, potentially including a carbon tax (E&E Daily, Oct. 11).

Click here to read the House Democrats' carbon tax bill.

Click here to read the Senate Democrats' letter to the supercommittee.