on environmental issues. Both Kerry and Lieberman have been two of the strongest Senators on the environment - both having lifetime LCV scores in the 90s.
In the first place the bill has not yet been made public - so it is premature to urge its defeat. In addition, there is no way that the bill "guts" the EPA. The EPA's programs control many toxins - and the only substance that would be affected is CO2. Some articles have said that a bill would eliminate the EPA's ability to control CO2, something that it has not yet done. (Note that this December article refers to what the EPA might do -
http://www.usatoday.com/money/industries/energy/environment/2009-12-08-carbontoll08_ST_N.htm ) So, there is nothing done now that the bill would stop - so "gut" is pretty inaccurate. As to the states, articles have had direct quotes from the Senators saying that it would not eliminate all state controls - just any cap and trade controls - presumably because the federal controls would replace them.
It has been said in some articles that no bill could pass the Senate that did not eliminate the EPA's ability to regulate CO2. If that is true, the question is whether it is better to have just the EPA or just the bill work to cut emissions. The danger of having just the EPA, is that the EPA goals would change if a different President were elected. Just as things like mercury levels in water changed as the Presidency went from Bush to Obama. The question is whether the bill, written to get 60 Senators, is better. Here, it is certainly better to wait until Monday before jumping the gun and attacking it.
To me, the biggest loss might be losing the regional cap and trade controls, which people like Kerry pushed for for decades, because the federal government was not moving. However, it would seem that federal controls resulting from the bill would likely end up doing more nationwide. Conceptually, even if you assume that the federal controls are less strict than the current regional ones - the fact that the regional ones aim to cut emissions in areas with about half the population would mean that unless the regional goals amount to cuts twice as big as the federal ones you end up ahead.
PS As to needing 60 Senators - in this case it does. Unlike healthcare, where language was included to allow reconciliation, that was not done for climate change. In fact, Johannes had an amendment that specifically prohibited it - and many Democrats voted for the amendment.
PSS The CLEAR Act has no chance of passing. The reason is that there are too many states that loss under its formulae. Their plan is to collect money from the power plants that pollute and return 75% of that individuals. This is why it is called cap and dividend. Now, this will be great for people in Cantwell's state of WA, where a significant amount of their power comes from hydroelectric dams. The nationally computed dividend might actually be higher than their increased electric costs. Not so in the many Midwestern states that currently have coal fired power plants. If you read the letter from the coal state Senators,
http://climateprogress.org/wp-content/uploads/2010/04/Senate-letter-document_pm_04.pdf , you will see that the money from any fees might be better spent mitigating the economic impact where it was the greatest.
The point is that pricing carbon under any plan will change how much energy costs differently in different areas. This is a case where government intervention, whether CLEAR, K/L/G, or the EPA, will be changing the relative (and absolute) cost of energy around the country. Senators like Sherrod Brown, Russ Feingold and others are not holding back their approval because they don't believe in climate change, but because they want to insure that their states are treated fairly. That seems to mean putting the research dollars into clean coal, even if Kerry, for one, is skeptical that it could be achieved, subsidizing some of the additional cost, and legislating tariffs (though they won't be called that) to add costs to products from countries not themselves constraining their carbon emissions.
You could actually make the case that the coal state Senators have influenced this bill to be fairer to their states - otherwise it would be their states that are the big losers - of jobs and with higher fuel costs. The EPA does not have a way that they could build in anything that mitigates these uneven effects. Only a comprehensive bill can do that.
From some articles, K/L/G have worked with Collins and Cantwell and they may have been influenced to take some of the ideas from the that bill.