CQ:

The Congressional Budget Office said Wednesday that the cap-and-trade climate change bill sponsored by Sens. John Kerry, D-Mass., and Barbara Boxer, D-Calif., would generate a $21 billion surplus over the period of 2010-19. The nonpartisan CBO also said that after 2019, the bill, S 1733, would continue to generate more money than it would spend.

Here is the Congressional Budget Office’s full analysis:

climate_s1733_cbo –

Kate Sheppard at Mother Jones:

What is important is both the public appearance by Graham and the emergence of Lieberman as the third wingman. In his remarks, Graham seemed to distance himself from the Republicans on the Environment and Public Works Committee that are boycotting the markup of the Kerry-Boxer bill.”If you can’t participate in solving the problem, then why are you up here?” said Graham.

But later in the day he sided with EPW’s Republican rebels. In a letter to EPA administrator Lisa Jackson, Graham joined with Judd Gregg of New Hampshire and Olympia Snowe and Susan Collins of Maine—all seen as potential “yes” votes—to endorse the call for further EPA analysis. “As Senators interested in a bipartisan approach to addressing climate change and energy independence this Congress, we have a keen interest in ensuring that cost estimates, models, and other data critical to the legislative process be made available to members of Congress and the public in a timely manner,” they wrote. “We cannot support legislation without this information.”

Here is the letter, which was from Senators Graham, Collins, Snowe and Gregg: