House Republicans today rallied behind an election-year spending blueprint that would slash even more budget authority for several major Energy Department programs than the GOP envisioned last year, while calling for a broad expansion of domestic oil and gas development as well as checks on U.S. EPA authority.

The fiscal 2013 budget unveiled today by House Budget Chairman Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) would knock nearly $20 billion from the $1.047 trillion cap on discretionary spending that both parties' leaders agreed to for 2013 as part of an August deal to raise the federal debt limit. That poke at Senate Democrats appears to put the chambers on track for another year of eleventh-hour battling over keeping the government funded beyond Sept. 30 -- with energy and environmental spending again in the crossfire.

Ryan's budget would cut $3 billion in authority for fiscal 2013 from civilian DOE programs, including the Nuclear Regulatory Commission and the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, according to a summary his committee released today. The broad categories that encompass basic science at DOE and environmental protection at EPA and Interior, however, would see budget authority slightly higher than House Republicans proposed in their fiscal framework last year.

Beyond the hard numbers, however, Ryan made clear that his party intends to make a hard turn away from a DOE that focused on alternative and clean technologies under President Obama. The budget "would immediately terminate all programs that allow government to play venture capitalist with taxpayers' money," Ryan's panel wrote, name-checking the DOE loan program that funded bankrupt solar company Solyndra.

EPA was hardly spared the GOP rhetorical knife. "Congress must limit the EPA's discretionary power to impose a bureaucratic version of the job-destroying cap-and-trade program, and it must allow the private sector to develop proven sources of American-made energy," House GOP budget-writers wrote.

As they argued that "unnecessary regulations" from the Obama administration are behind the recent uptick in gasoline prices, House Republicans vowed to undo "moratoriums on safe, responsible energy exploration in the United States."

That goal of rolling back federal bans on rigs in the Atlantic, Pacific and Arctic oceans has cleared the House but stalled in the Senate, where the Democratic majority is just as committed to hewing to the discretionary spending limits that were enshrined in the August debt-limit pact.

"Those who say we do not have a budget have either failed to pay attention to what they voted on or they are deliberately trying to mislead the public," Senate Budget Chairman Kent Conrad (D-N.D.) told reporters today as he announced the filing of a measure to officially set spending caps at the levels agreed to last year.

Should the Senate pursue appropriations benchmarks using different upper limits than the House, as now appears all but certain, the chances for a deal on fiscal 2013 spending without another catch-all omnibus -- or, in the worst-case scenario, a last-minute continuing resolution -- would spike.

Even Ryan acknowledged that his long-term fiscal vision would run aground without a glimmer of accord from the upper chamber. "This budget process stops, it ends, if the Senate says that they're not going to do anything," he told reporters.

Natural Resources Defense Council legislative director Scott Slesinger previewed howls to come from the environmental community by blasting the House GOP budget as "a road map to social dysfunction."

"It would cripple all the protections we have come to expect from our government -- from air traffic control and food safety to homeland security and our national parks -- and above all, the air we breathe and the water we drink," Slesinger said in a statement. "The only thing this 'budget' would protect are tax cuts for millionaires."

Click here to read the House GOP budget set for votes tomorrow.

Reporter Amanda Peterka contributed.