With Obama-friendly economists downgrading the promise of 4 million jobs “created or saved” by the stimulus package to something closer to 2 or 3 million, House and Senate Republicans yesterday offered what they are calling the “no-cost stimulus package.”

Their bill is really an energy bill. Unfortunately, its common-sense measures, zero cost (actually, the federal government and state governments would make money from it) and guarantee of economic benefits will do little to improve its chances of enactment because it would upset the applecart of President Obama’s environmental agenda.

Rep. John Shaddegg (R, Ariz.) and Sen. David Vitter (R, La.) led the presentation of the package, which would keep expedite drilling for oil and natural gas on the outer-continental shelf, expand states’ boundaries in the ocean for the purpose of taxing the energy development, and open the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge for “environmentally sensitive” exploration, with the lease funds going toward renewable energy projects.

The bill would also streamline licensing requirements and curb environmental litigation against energy production projects. It prohibits the use of the Endangered Species Act to regulate carbon dioxide, and prevents states from setting their own higher emissions standards for vehicles.

By their estimate, the bill would create (they do not hedge their bets with the word “save”) 2 million “long-term, sustainable” new jobs, both in the energy industry and, to a smaller extent, in every industry that uses energy and will beneft from increased production. As Shadegg put it in a recent interview on Fox:

“I think the American people are saying enough is enough. They’re sick of spending, they’re sick of having to pick up the tab for this, and they want jobs, the jobless rate just went up in America. I think you have to answer if you’re a policy maker how is it that we continue to pursue policies on energy that export American jobs.”

The Republican lawmakers frame their bill as an alternative to “Stimulus II,” which Speaker Pelosi is now discussing in an apparent tacit admission of the shortcomings of Stimulus I. Unfortunately, many of the environmental provisions — especially ANWR — are at clear cross-purposes with the administration. Even the OCS leases, which the Bush administration attempted to initiate at the last minute, appear to have a very doubtful future. The prevailing belief in Majority Democratic Washington is that the way to improve the economy is not to increase production and productivity, but rather to borrow trillions out of the economy and let it trickle back in through government spending.