Washington ? Bob Dole and Tom Daschle ambled into the Senate Agriculture Committee’s hearing room one morning last week without the flourishes they enjoyed when they were kings on Capitol Hill.

At the start, the room was too dark for Dole. He pointed to an unlit chandelier and ordered it to be turned on as if he were still the Senate majority leader. Soon there was light.

Then these former Senate party leaders and failed presidential aspirants tried to turn on a bright light to something else – a big new farm-energy plan they are promoting under the auspices of an organization called the Bipartisan Policy Center. It is a plan they wrote together. The center is supported by foundation money.

“Former” is a title with all of the honor and none of the clout that this often cynical city requires. The question is whether Democrat Daschle of South Dakota and Republican Dole of Kansas – both of whom are actually now permanently Washingtonians – have enough residual star power to sell their bipartisan approach to a deeply divided Congress.

Although they work for a major Washington law firm with clients from across the country, Dole and Daschle said they would not personally lobby for the legislation. Instead, they said they would testify before committees.

For both men, this was familiar territory, a room often filled with smoke in days past and where farm-state senators made their deals. Dole pointed to the seat he had sat in for 28 years at the end of a long table in the middle of the room. Daschle also sat on the panel for a number of years.

Last Wednesday, they pushed what they called a “revolutionary” program, outlined in a 70-page report, although Dole deadpanned: “I wouldn’t want to take a test on every part of it.” He said Daschle, 59, who is considered more of a policy wonk, is “the real expert.”

Among other things, their plan would do away with direct government payments to farmers, let farmers borrow no-interest money to invest in windmills and other renewable energy projects, allow trading of clean-energy credits to tackle climate change and subsidize crops for fuel as well as food.

In a global world, farmers have to rely on something in addition to income from crops, they said. Like other proposed legislation, theirs calls for an expansion in the ethanol program and reliance on renewable and alternative fuels. More cars would have to be built that could use gasoline with high ethanol content. Daschle said a fourth “F” should be added to the 3-F program, “food, feed, fiber and now fuel.”

To support farmers in times of price plunges, the former senators offered a “countercyclical” program based on the government’s current marketing loan program for farmers.

Another major feature of their plan would put a $250,000 cap on farm payments, a proposal aimed at countering criticism that far too much of the program goes to big corporate farmers. Their plan would close a loophole in which corporations use more than one entity to get the maximum benefit.

Both men said ending direct payments to farmers would save billions of dollars that could be used to pay for energy incentives for the agricultural sector. Their plan would call for a $5 billion, five-year program to provide tax-exempt bonds for constructing electrical transmission lines to carry “clean” energy, such as wind.

Moreover, Daschle said farmers should be able to borrow up to $100,000 in no-interest loans to invest in energy projects in the agriculture sector, so that the big money on Wall Street would not control everything.