The battle is heating up in the matter of who will regulate greenhouse gases, Congress or the EPA.

House and Senate conferees last night (December rejected an attempt to block U.S. EPA’s work on regulations to curb greenhouse gas emissions.

Appropriators rejected, 5-9, the amendment from Rep. Todd Tiahrt (R-Kan.) to block any funding in the omnibus bill for Clean Air Act regulations based on the endangerment finding.

Tiahrt’s proposal followed swiftly on the heels of EPA’s release earlier this week of its “endangerment finding,” a declaration that carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases pose a threat to public health and welfare.

if you don’t think the threat of EPA regulation is influencing the debate, check out this quote from David Frum:

House and Senate conferees last night rejected a proposal to deny EPA funds to enforce its new powers over greenhouse gasses. So instead of an economically rational approach to carbon abatement – a carbon tax or even a cap-and-trade system stripped of the abuses and boondoggles attached to it by House Democrats – we’re going to have the least rational approach: bureaucratic enforcement.

That statement comes in the context of a post about the drawbacks of the Republican’s current just say no strategy to any and all legislation proposed by Obama and the Democrats. What’s interesting is that he allows for some kind of regulation, as long as it isn’t the hated EPA.

Although why anyone would characterize the current make-up of Congress as more rational than the EPA’s staff is a bit perplexing.