As Obamacare comes to a grinding halt, Democrats seem ready to scale back ambitions for the president’s other signature domestic policy initiative — a comprehensive “cap-and-trade” bill.

“Realistically, the cap-and-trade bills in the House and the Senate are going nowhere. . . . They’re not business-friendly enough, and they don’t lead to meaningful energy independence,” Sen. Lindsey Graham (R., S.C.) told the New York Times. Graham is working on a package of job-creating energy initiatives, ranging from the expansion of offshore drilling to the building of wind turbines and new nuclear power plants.

“What is dead is some massive cap-and-trade system that regulates carbon in a fashion that drives up energy costs,” Graham said.

UPDATE: President Obama will likely “re-brand” his energy and climate-change bill during his State of the Union address, by avoiding reference to it as a “cap-and-trade” bill and casting it instead as part of a job-creation agenda.

“This is about creating a new generation of clean energy jobs that will position us in a global market, and we need the legislation to do that,” White House energy and climate adviser Carole Browner said at a forum Wednesday, previewing the president’s State of the Union comments on the subject.