President Barack Obama meets with members of his Cabinet in the Cabinet Room of the White House, Jan. 29, 2010. (Official White House Photo by Pete Souza)

Perhaps indicating the dwindling likelihood of passing a climate bill in 2010, new Obama budget will not assume revenue generated by a cap-and-trade.

Is the Obama administration is giving up on passing climate legislation in 2010? Despite vowing to pass a climate bill in his State of the Union address last week, the White House has reportedly dropped the hundreds of billions of dollars in projected revenue that would have been collected in a cap-and-trade scheme.

"The $646 billion revenue projection is no longer in the budget," an administration official told Reuters early Monday morning. "Unlike last year, we do not show an assumed amount of cap- and-trade revenue since the exact nature of the legislation remains in flux," the official said.

The President announced the fiscal 2011 budget at an 11:30 press event on Monday: (from firedoglake)[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0KOo1TGcnH4[/youtube]

The change of plans appears to have happened rather suddenly, as CQ Politics reported just three days ago that the Obama budget would be keeping the carbon revenue portion of the budget in tact, although in a slightly different form than the fiscal 2010 version.

The fiscal 2010 budget projected raising $646 billion in revenue over a decade through the sale of emissions allowances to polluters. Roughly two-thirds of that revenue would have gone out to payroll tax breaks via Obama's "Making Work Pay" program. That particular mechanism was opposed by some Democrats for not generating enough money for carbon mitigation and renewable energy investment.

The Obama administration's record-breaking $3.8 trillion budget will also put a freeze on discretionary nonsecurity spending and boost revenues by letting the Bush tax cuts for families making more than $250,000 per year to expire at the end of 2010 and by putting a new tax on big banks to recoup any losses from the financial bailout.

Follow Tim Hurst on twitter @ecopolitologist