By Melissa Dunson

mdunson@joplinglobe.com

U.S. Rep. Roy Blunt, R-Mo., is calling for Congress to reconvene soon to consider a Republican-backed energy plan.

During a phone conference Thursday with Southwest Missouri reporters, Blunt said he sent letters to all the Democratic members of Congress this week, asking them to join Republican lawmakers in urging Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi to reconvene Congress.

He said Congress officially adjourned at 11:23 a.m. Aug. 1, before the Republican members could present what Blunt calls the “Find More, Use Less” energy plan. Blunt said the majority of representatives left at that time, and the lights and microphones were turned off and the cameras shut off. But Blunt and several other representatives stayed to discuss the plan until 5 p.m. that day.

“They wouldn’t let us talk about what we wanted to in any kind of official way,” he said.

U.S. Rep. Ike Skelton, D-Mo., was not available for comment Thursday, and efforts to reach U.S. Sen. Claire McCaskill, D-Mo., were not successful.

The energy plan Blunt is pushing combines increasing the access to America’s natural energy reserves, and rewarding conservation and those who branch out into alternative fuels

Points of the plan include:

n Opening ocean resources to offshore drilling.

n Opening the Arctic Coastal Plain to drilling. The coastal plain is the desert part of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, Blunt said, and is not as environmentally sensitive as some other areas.

n Providing tax incentives for businesses and families in purchasing more fuel-efficient vehicles.

n Providing a monetary prize for developing an economically feasible 100-mile-per-gallon vehicle.

n Providing tax incentives for business people and homeowners to improve energy efficiency.

n Extending for 10 years the tax credit for alternative energy production, including wind and solar development. Those credits expired at the end of last year.