In an editorial headlined, “Cap and Evade: How Senate Democrats Maneuvered to Kill a Bill to Rein in the EPA’s Carbon Rule,” the Wall Street Journal today accused U.S. Senator Bob Casey and several Senate colleagues of seeking to dodge accountability for their opposition to stripping the Environmental Protection Agency of its ability to regulate carbon dioxide.

The National Republican Senatorial Committee (NRSC) piggybacked on the Journal editorial this afternoon, calling Casey’s vote a “job-killing” one that he sought to smooth over with “election-cycle posturing.”

Said NRSC Press Secretary Chris Bond: “Senator Casey’s vote on this critical amendment serves as yet another reminder that Pennsylvania jobs will always take a backseat to his support for his party bosses’ liberal environmental agenda in Washington.  Once again, Casey is well out-of-step with his state’s families and job creators – and he will have to answer for this liberal record at the polls next year.”

The brief background:

Last month, Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell added to a small business-related bill an amendment that sought to strip the EPA of its ability to regulate carbon dioxide as a pollutant under the Clean Air Act of 1970.  The amendment eventually garnered 50 Senate votes – 10 short of the 60 needed for passage.

What further raised the ire of the Journal and now the NRSC, however, were a trifecta of Democrat-sponsored counterproposals that would have placed less stringent limits on the EPA than the McConnell amendment would have.  By voting for one or more of those counterproposals, the Journal and NRSC are contending, Senator Casey and a dozen of his Democratic colleagues had supported “phony alternatives as political cover, then turning around and voting to kill the McConnell amendment,” as the Journal editorial alleged today.