WASHINGTON – The White House on Tuesday raised the stakes on the Senate’s first major climate change vote of the year, threatening to veto a Republican-led effort to stop the Environmental Protection Agency from carrying out regulations controlling greenhouse gases.

The White House, citing the environmental damage caused by the Gulf oil spill, said the measure to overturn new EPA regulations would increase the nation’s dependence on oil and other fossil fuels and “block efforts to cut pollution that threatens our health and well-being.”

With the veto threat, the “resolution of disapproval” offered by Alaska Republican Lisa Murkowski has little chance of becoming law. But the outcome of the vote on Thursday is being seen by some as a key test as the Senate prepares to take up major climate change legislation later this summer.

A dozen Republicans, including Murkowski, argued at a news conference Tuesday that the EPA regulations, when implemented next year, would both kill jobs and usurp the authority of Congress.

Senators will make “a statement as to whether or not Congress or unelected bureaucrats at the EPA should set climate policy for this country,” she said.

“This is an attempt to turn the attention of the American people away from what’s happening with respect to the oil spill and saying what we really should be doing to protect the environment is give all of this new power to the EPA,” said Rep. Bob Bennett, R-Utah.