The White House today rolled out a muscular assault on House Republicans' budget, highlighting the GOP's estimated 19 percent long-term cut to clean energy in a bid to hobble the fiscal plan before its first lap to passage finishes.

The push-back comes as President Obama embarks on an energy tour aimed at highlighting his support for investment in both fossil fuels and renewables, an "all of the above" strategy that the GOP finds wanting in the oil and gas department. With House Budget Chairman Paul Ryan's (R-Wis.) plan set for floor votes next week, the administration saw its proposed Energy Department cuts as a chance to force Republicans on the defensive over science and research slashes.

Acting White House budget director Jeff Zients posted an online analysis that pegged Ryan's 10-year cut to federal green energy programs at 19 percent, "derailing efforts to put a million electric vehicles on the road by 2015, retrofit residential homes to save energy and consumers money, and make the commercial building sector 20 percent more efficient by 2022."

Zients also estimated that Ryan's fiscal 2013 budget framework would tee up decade-long cuts of $100 billion to science, space and technology research, while Obama spokesman Jay Carney followed with a hit of his own on Republicans.

"You have to be aggressively and deliberately ignorant of the world economy not to know and understand that clean energy technologies are going to play a huge role in the 21st century," Carney told reporters today.

Despite the White House's attempt to undercut the Ryan budget on the energy front, its biggest political obstacle could prove to be internal GOP resistance. Democrats are likely to maintain a united front in voting against the measure next week, and conservatives seeking to add to its $19 billion in discretionary cuts below the 2013 cap set by August's debt limit deal -- a move that inflamed Senate Democratic leaders -- also could defect on the floor.

Rep. Tom Cole (R-Okla.), who serves on both the Budget and Appropriations committees, yesterday urged fellow Republicans to show "flexibility" as the Ryan budget advances next week.

"While we don't need" to hit the $1.047 trillion discretionary spending ceiling agreed to last year, Cole warned, Senate Democrats and the White House are committed to doing so. "We're not going to win everything in this discussion or debate."

Senate Democrats, for their part, already are moving toward the crafting of agency-specific 2013 spending bills using the debt deal's cap as a guide. Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), the chamber's chief DOE appropriator, said yesterday that she expects more details on her bill in mid-April and avowed that her party's budget cap "is, in fact, the law."

The House GOP budget is not required to offer details on cuts to specific agencies, but Ryan's panel made clear that DOE clean energy loan programs would come in for particular pain yesterday by vowing to "immediately terminate all programs that allow government to play venture capitalist with taxpayers' money" (Greenwire, March 20).