Congress is back this week and that means lawmakers will resume their largely symbolic debate over energy policy and Environmental Protection Agency regulations — one that will set the parameters for their tussle over spending strategy for next year.

With spending bills and the deficit supercommittee looming, Senate Democrats plan to include energy items in a broader jobs agenda, while House Republicans look to continue to target a host of EPA regulations they view as job killers.

But both the House Republican and Senate Democratic agendas have little chance of passage on their own — acting predominantly as marketing tools heading into the 2012 election.

They set the boundaries, though, for each side’s attempt to slip what it can into a fiscal year 2012 omnibus spending package. “All of that is preparatory for a CR fight,” said GOP energy strategist Mike McKenna.

IN THE SENATE: Democrats’ agenda will first include a debate on patent reform, likely followed by trade agreements. But Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) also said recently that energy jobs are “one of the things on the top of the list,” adding there will be a push to “make that one of our more signature issues over the next couple of months.”

Reid will look to build on momentum from a fourth annual clean energy conference he co-hosted in Las Vegas last week that attracted Vice President Joe Biden, Energy Secretary Steven Chu and state and industry leaders.

His agenda is likely to include bills passed by the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, which Reid has called “one of the few committees in the Senate where there’s been outstanding cooperation” between panel leaders in both parties.

Aides have said top possibilities include boosting electric vehicles and extending the Home Star residential energy efficiency program, as well as an expired $2.3 billion advanced manufacturing tax credit first authorized in the 2009 economic stimulus law. Another is the Section 1603 Treasury grants for renewable energy projects, which are set to expire at the end of the year.

Also primed for action is an energy panel proposal establishing a Clean Energy Deployment Administration to finance energy projects.

Democrats also have eyes on legislation that could send tens of billions of dollars from BP’s Clean Water Act fines connected to last year’s Gulf of Mexico spill toward Gulf Coast restoration efforts.

But if history is any guide, expect a poison pill or two in any agenda pursued by either party. That may include repealing oil and gas industry tax incentives to help pay for cleaner energy incentives — a position supported by Senate Democratic leaders and the White House.

The price tag remains a problem for many initiatives — particularly as the supercommittee will be looking to slash at least $1.2 trillion in the next decade’s spending.

IN THE HOUSE: House Republicans, meanwhile, will continue to hammer the administration’s environmental policies with a string of anti-EPA votes.

Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-Va.) announced plans to hold votes this fall to repeal the administration’s “10 most harmful job-destroying regulations,” including some from EPA.

President Barack Obama’s decision Friday to withdraw EPA’s ozone rule until the next Congress takes one item off that GOP agenda.

But still up first for the House is a vote set for the week of Sept. 19 on the TRAIN Act, which would create an interagency committee to analyze the cumulative effects of EPA rules. The bill would also delay two EPA rules curbing air toxics and soot- and smog-forming pollution from power plants.

Bills to force EPA to delay and repropose air toxics rules for industrial boilers and cement plants are slated for floor votes the week of Oct. 3. The Energy and Commerce Committee panel will hold hearings on those bills on Thursday.

The GOP will also take aim at EPA rules that haven’t been finalized or even proposed.

In October or November, the GOP intends to vote on legislation to prohibit the EPA from regulating coal ash as hazardous waste. The agency has proposed two competing options for regulating coal ash but hasn’t yet issued a final rule.

House leadership also plans to take action this winter on a bill from freshman Republican Rep. Kristi Noem of South Dakota aimed at blocking EPA from regulating farm dust, although EPA officials have said they don’t plan to issue such rules.

In addition, the chamber will tackle upcoming greenhouse gas standards for power plants and oil and gas refineries. Those standards haven’t yet been proposed, but Cantor said he expects Energy and Commerce Committee Chairman Fred Upton (R-Mich.) to “move swiftly” in the coming months to take action on them.

SPENDING BILLS: Green groups have expressed concern over the possibility of riders on EPA and similar issues being given serious consideration in the joint deficit committee’s talks. But the real fight will be on whether such riders appear in either an initial continuing spending resolution, which Congress needs to approve by the end of the current fiscal year on Sept. 30, or in a subsequent omnibus spending plan.

As for the supercommittee, a key issue is whether it will delve into slashing tax incentives, not just cutting spending.

“That’s really, for energy, the key dynamic,” said Paul Bledsoe of the Bipartisan Policy Center. “It’s really brutally difficult to get to the $1.2 [trillion] or $1.5 [trillion cut] without doing that or reciprocally without getting into some entitlements.”

The deficit committee may simply recommend that Congress later tackle broader tax reform.

“It’s sort of a graduated step-ladder of issues, and so the question of how high up the ladder they go is hard to say,” Bledsoe said.

JOBS AND INFRASTRUCTURE: Speaking before a joint session of Congress on Thursday evening, Obama will lay out “a series of proposals that are aimed at having a quick impact on economic growth and job creation,” White House spokesman Jay Carney said last week.

Obama last week signaled the need for Congress to quickly approve extensions to both Federal Aviation Administration and surface transportation laws this month, while work continues on multiyear infrastructure reauthorization strategies.

Congress by the end of September must extend surface transportation law and the 18.4-cents-per-gallon gas tax. While there is not likely to be a struggle to extend the gas tax at its current level, the surface transportation law extension gives House Republicans a first crack at slimming federal highway and other infrastructure spending in line with the philosophy in House Budget Chairman Paul Ryan’s spending blueprint.

While an extension is usually routine, all precedent is discarded after the fight this summer over extending the FAA authorization — which Congress also needs to do again by Sept. 16.

One exceedingly rare case of potential bipartisan cooperation — legislation boosting federal pipeline safety rules — may get some traction.

House Energy and Commerce Republicans have a draft proposal that includes a civil penalty of as much as $250,000 per day and a maximum of $2.5 million total for pipeline operators who “willfully committed” a major violation. “It’s a priority for the fall … and could move the bill as early as September,” Upton spokesman Sean Bonyun said.

The House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee is also working on a bill. Panel Chairman John Mica of Florida and Pennsylvania Rep. Bill Shuster, head of the Railroads, Pipelines and Hazardous Materials Subcommittee visited Montana in August for a “fact-finding tour” related to an Exxon pipeline spill in the Yellowstone River and how that might influence legislation.

Such work on pipeline safety legislation comes amid more polarizing State Department deliberations over whether to grant approval to TransCanada’s controversial Keystone XL pipeline project.

Green groups, House Democrats and former Vice President Al Gore have teamed up with the likes of Nebraska GOP Sen. Mike Johanns to try to torpedo TransCanada’s current proposal. Oil industry and labor union interests have aligned in favor of the project, which the State Department appears closer to approving after determining that it would have little adverse impact on the environment. The department will make a decision by the end of the year.

OTHER ISSUES: After reporting 15 energy bills, and with its work on offshore drilling plans stymied over a revenue-sharing battle, the Senate energy panel will be relatively quiet this fall. The committee “has turned in its energy homework,” spokesman Bill Wicker said.

Work may be done on public lands bills while committee leadership and staff provide background material and recommendations to the joint deficit committee.

The Energy and Natural Resources panel has a half-dozen or so confirmation hearings pending for nominees to the energy and interior departments. They include Rebecca Wodder’s nomination to be assistant interior secretary for fish, wildlife and parks. Senate Republicans have vowed to block her nomination, in part because of past comments about dam removal she made when she was chief of the conservation group American Rivers.

Robin Bravender contributed to this report.