As the struggle over Senate energy legislation, the Kerry-Lieberman American Power Act, is getting ready to heat up, the Environmental Defense Action Fund has prepared  ads targeting, among others, Missouri’s Kit Bond:

However, even if everyone who sees the ad contacts Bond and implores him to support the legislation, I doubt that it would have much effect. Bond has already made it clear that he’s glad that he’s had his chance to dance, and he’s just as willing as ever to pay the Big Oil and King Coal pipers (who have supported him to the tune of $446,000 over his career).

In fact, Bond has already stepped up and taken a leadership role in the Republican fight against clean energy legislation. He and his partner in crime, Kay Bailey Hutchison (R-TX), dusted off and reissued as new last October’s widely disputed “report” in which they attempted to present clean energy legislation as a “$3.6 trillion gas tax.” Needless to say, this new iteration of the same ole, same ole was just as quickly and easily discredited as it was last fall. A spokesperson for Senator John Kerry responded to Bond’s and Hutchison’s latest effort to cast clean energy legislation as an “energy tax” with the following comment:

The only thing Senator Bond and Senator Hutchison have to worry about today is if we start taxing bad math and misinformation, because it could cost them billions.

Actually, the American Power Act proposes relief and refund programs that would mitigate the impact of nearly 69 percent of the carbon fees it would impose. Numerous studies show that the legislation would cost relatively little – for instance, according to EPA modeling results, it would add between $80 to $150 a year to the average household budget. As Senator Lieberman put it:

“There’ll be some people who will want to demagogue that politically, but that’s less than $1 a day,” Lieberman told reporters. “Is the American household willing to pay less than $1 so we don’t have to buy oil from foreign countries, so we can create millions of new jobs, so we can clean up our environment? I think the answer is going to be yes.”

Ah yes, demagoguery. And, of course, Senator Lieberman ought to remember that “yes” has little currency with members of the Party of No – who, oddly enough, used to really like the idea of cap-and-trade – back when they thought Democrats would never go for it.