So according to E&E News, as scheduled, in a meeting with industry groups

Sens. John Kerry (D-Mass.), Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) and Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.) shared an eight-page outline of their draft legislation that would reduce greenhouse gas emissions over the next four decades, including provisions to limit business costs while ramping up domestic production of oil, gas and nuclear power. . . . The senators collected their eight-page document from the industry officials before the meeting ended, and they declined comment on those details as they left the session.
“Directionally speaking, the way they’re trying to conform and shape this bill I’d suggest is largely in sync with what most people in American industry think is the direction you’re going to have to go if you’re going to have a successful program,” said Bruce Josten, executive vice president for government affairs at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.

Mmm. Yes. Largely something industry could sign off on. But apparently not the public. Which is why the three senators (let’s call them KGL) couldn’t risk having the details of what they’re proposing get out.

The reason is not nearly so secret. KGL are (thankfully) starting with the core program that was the one nugget folks like me greatly enjoy having as a centerpiece, the utility cap-and-trade about which the president said was intended to “cause electricity prices [to] necessarily skyrocket.” That sound bite ain’t going away any time soon. A rare, candid example of Obama’s fluency with the economics of something.

To which they are adding a gasoline tax designed by some of the majors (that would be “Big Oil”) to ensure the cost is borne solely by those people not at the table who, as the insipid DC phrase goes, are therefore on the menu. Tthat some utilities there — sorry, their Washington trade association, which incidentally will not be at all impacted by this bill, but instead will be ever-more indispensable — cannot figure out that they are on the menu is simply another example in the long road of claims that some deal guaranteed “certainty”. See Exhibit A, the U.S. auto industry, which walked away from the first CAFE table muttering such inanity.

You can’t choose or design those things which threaten you, but if I could, I’d have chosen this. And the fact that the promoters can’t risk having it be the subject of public scrutiny or conversation as they seek to massage deals with industry — so proud! — also reveals an opponent I’d prefer.