Of the three big issues before Congress this year — health care, cap-and-trade and banking regulation reform — U.S. Sen. Chuck Grassley said that cap-and-trade will be the most controversial.

“It just seems to me that the push for cap-and-trade has slowed down very dramatically since the [U.S.] House passed it on the Friday before the July 4th break,” Iowa Republican Grassley said, after noting that he didn’t believe cap-and-trade legislation would make it to the U.S. Senate floor this year. “It has really surfaced as being something that people understand and they don’t like, and that point of view is getting through to Congress.”

U.S. Sen. Charles Grassley (Lauren Victoria Burke/WDCPIX.COM)

U.S. Sen. Charles Grassley (Lauren Victoria Burke/WDCPIX.COM)

Members of the House passed the American Clean Energy and Security Act of 2009, commonly referred to as cap-and-trade legislation or the Waxman-Markey bill, in June. The legislation proposes limits on carbon dioxide emissions through the buying and selling of carbon credits. Emitters of carbon dioxide above the proposed limits would buy carbon credits from companies that are under the proposed limit, and the credits would be publicly traded by commodity brokers.

Mark-up of the Senate version of the legislation is taking place in the Committee on Environment and Public Works, headed by U.S. Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-CA) and U.S. Sen. Jim Inhofe (R-OK). Grassley, who indicated Boxer’s committee would begin mark-up in early October, would like to see more input from the committees on energy and agriculture since both will be heavily impacted by the legislation.

“I think it’s very, very important that the Agriculture Committee participate in mark-up because if there’s any segment of the American economy outside of utilities that could be hurt by a cap-and-trade bill, it would be American agriculture,” Grassley said. “And I think, from what I’ve heard so far, that agriculture is not getting adequate pressure or adequate consideration for things that they’ve already done to capture carbon through just one example, no-till farming… and then the use of agriculture energy being a big factor in agriculture production.”

Although members of the Agriculture Committee, now under the leadership of U.S. Sen. Blanche Lincoln (D-AR), has indicated that they will offer suggestions, Grassley would like to see them be more forceful through their own mark-up process.

“We need to make sure that agriculture has one voice on this cap-and-trade legislation,” he said.

Although admitting that he has concerns that the Agriculture Committee, under Lincoln and U.S. Sen. Saxby Chambliss (R-GA), might revert to the policy dominance of the rice and cotton industries that was seen during the ’60s and ’70s, Grassley said he does not have concerns about Lincoln leading in terms of potential cap-and-trade legislation.

“I’m not saying that [Lincoln] would do more than what [U.S. Sen. Tom Harkin] would do, but I think [through] her practical approach and her new leadership that she would want to be making sure she’s got her handprint on this piece of legislation,” Grassley said.