U.S. Sen. Lamar Alexander, R-Tenn., said Monday that he believes it's time that Senate leadership gets the message that "comprehensive, change-the-world bills," or legislation, are not working.

"We don't do comprehensive bills well," Alexander said of Congress.

In a teleconference Monday to Tennessee reporters, Alexander said he looks forward to hearing testimony today when the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works holds hearings on the "cap and trade" bill sponsored by Senators John Kerry D-Mass., and Barbara Boxer, D-Calif., the committee's chairman.

The idea behind cap-and-trade is to reduce carbon dioxide emissions by putting a price on the right to emit carbon and other greenhouse gases on businesses.

"I believe that climate change is a problem," Alexander said, "but I would like to drop the idea of cap and trade," in favor of nuclear power plants, electric cars and trucks, offshore drilling and a "mini-Manhattan project" to reduce carbon, if reducing carbon is declared a national goal.

"If the problem is too much carbon, why not take four steps to reduce carbon?" he asked.

Kerry-Boxer Bill

According to the Associated Press, the Kerry-Boxer bill would cap greenhouse gas emissions from power plants and large industrial facilities.

Facilities emitting carbon dioxide, which would include anything large enough to need its own power source, would have to obtain emission permits and the permits would be racheted down to achieve reductions. Emitters of CO2 would be able to buy and sell allowances to meet the government-imposed caps.

Alexander said he plans to oppose the Kerry-Boxer bill. He charged that it is "fundamentally flawed," too expensive and would cost U.S. jobs.

According to the Congressional Budget Office, the bill, if enacted, would take $100 billion out of the U.S. economy by 2020, Alexander said.

Not only would the bill hurt the United states' gross domestic product, Alexander said, it would be ineffective in reducing carbon in the atmosphere.

"Why not just agree that the goal is to reduce carbon?" then take practical steps to reduce it, he asked.

Alexander, who is the Senate Republican Conference chairman, said the "massive, 900-page" Kerry-Boxer bill was not available to be read until the weekend, and few on the committee have read it.

"The American people have come to expect" for those in Congress to read bills and know what they are going to cost before voting on them, Alexander said.

This bill "deliberately kills jobs, and deliberately makes Americans poorer," he charged, adding that any bill that does those things needs to be debated thoroughly and justified before passage, if it is passed.

He said the only data available so far on what the bill will cost is a short statement from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency that says the Kerry-Boxer bill would cost "about the same as the Waxman-Markey bill."

"It should be relatively simple" for the Congressional Budget Office to produce a meaningful figure," Alexander said.

Tennessee's senior senator also noted that the bill will be "combined with several hundred pages of mandates," the cost of which is still unknown.

If Congress were to agree that reducing carbon is a national goal, and President Obama were to show leadership, Alexander said, then it should be a simple matter to remove barriers now in the way of new nuclear plants.

Alexander has for some time been calling for 100 new nuclear facilities in the U.S. He has noted that it has been 30 years since the last domestic nuclear power plant was started.

No approved plans for a new nuclear plant exist at this time, Alexander noted, though President Obama said last week in New Orleans that it would be "stupid" for the nation's energy policy not to include nuclear power.

President Obama could also show leadership by removing barriers to offshore exploration for natural gas, Alexander said.

Alexander said he would like to see the president recommend $100 billion for carbon-free power research.

The Tennessee senator said he would much rather see a "cheap, clean energy program, instead of a high-cost one." Cheap energy has always been a national priority, he said, because it makes people's lives better.

When a reporter asked what incentive power companies would have to build nuclear plants if the threat of a carbon cap was removed, Alexander said "The short answer is: clean air, low cost and reliability," criteria that coal, solar and wind power cannot now meet.

"Nuclear power stands on its own," he said.

Alexander was asked what the difference is between cap and trade on carbon and the "sulfur cap and trade" in the early 1990s. Carbon cap and trade would set up an elaborate market in which industries and countries that produce less carbon can sell "credits" to entities that produce too much, and would be worldwide.

Alexander said there are two major differences. One was "a relatively small amount of money for sulfur," compared to "hundreds of billions of dollars and international offsets" for carbon.

The second difference, he said, was that pollution control devices -- smokestack scrubbers -- existed for keeping sulfur from getting into the atmosphere.

"We don't have a commercially viable way to take carbon from coal-fired power plants," he said.