Detroit – The EPA’s greenhouse gas power grab draws a bulls-eye around Michigan manufacturing. And Senators Debbie Stabenow and Carl Levin are aiding the effort.

A bipartisan group of industrial state senators led by Sen. Murkowski (R-Alaska) and Sen. Jay Rockefeller (D–W.Va.) Thursday co-sponsored a bill to put a leash on the agency. Rockefeller, like Stabenow and Levin, is a liberal from a carbon-producing state who refused to grant EPA powers that could cripple its economy.

The effect of the EPA regulation could cost already struggling Michigan an additional 90,800 jobs by 2030, according to Margo Thorning of the American Council for Capital Formation. And yet, in defiance of their state’s interest, both of its Democratic senators voted against the measure, in effect vetoing their state’s interest and voting with the president.

In the middle of a White House campaign to use the BP spill to pass global warming legislation, the Murkowski bill would have been a stinging political defeat for Obama. Stabenow and Levin faced a choice – powder the president’s image or put a boot on Michigan’s coal and auto industries.

They chose the latter.