Dingell, Boucher call for steep greenhouse gas cuts The darkening economic outlook may force lawmakers to delay some public policy priorities, but two House Democrats indicated Tuesday that curbing global warming won’t be one of them. House Energy and Commerce Committee Chairman John Dingell (D-Mich.) and Energy and Air Quality subcommittee Chairman Rick Boucher (D-Va.) released a 461-page bill that seeks to cut greenhouse gas emissions by roughly 80 percent over the next four decades. Environmental groups welcomed that target, but criticized the bill, which Dingell and Boucher refer to as a “discussion draft,” for delaying dramatic emissions reductions until after 2020. The long-awaited legislation relies on a so-called cap-and-trade program to make those reductions. Companies would be able to buy or sell emissions allowances on an open market, depending on whether they met or exceeded emissions caps set by federal regulators. “Politically, scientifically, legally, and morally, the question has been settled: regulation of greenhouse gases in the United States is coming,” Dingell and Boucher wrote to committee members on Tuesday. “The only remaining question is what form that regulation will take.” Part of the impetus for the release of the bill seems to be to head off a separate effort at the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to cut emissions through federal regulation, an option made available last year when the Supreme Court ruled that the EPA had the authority, under the Clean Air Act, to address global warming....