President Obama’s fiscal 2011 budget assumes $646 billion in revenue over ten years from the sale of emissions allowances under “cap-and-trade.”

Including cap-and-trade revenue in the new budget underscores Obama’s commitment to press ahead with climate legislation, which passed in the House last year but stalled in the Senate. The president reiterated his insistence that Congress address global warming in his State of the Union address.
That budget would have used about two-thirds of the revenue to fund payroll tax breaks through the administration’s “Making Work Pay” program. About $15 billion annually, for a total of $150 billion over a decade, would have been reserved for alternative energy research and development.
Senate aides say they expect the fiscal 2011 budget to make different recommendations for spending any revenue from a climate law.

Sen. Byran Dorgan (D., N.D.), chairman of the Senate Energy-Water Appropriations Subcommittee, said the assumption was a poor one.

“If there’s an anticipation of cap-and-trade revenues, I think that anticipation probably is not going to result in success because my best estimate is that we’re not likely to do a cap-and-trade bill this year,” Dorgan said.