The bill and its $4 million price tag is what made Utah Rep. Rob Bishop sick.

Speaking out against the bill, Bishop said the House should have been working on the energy crisis.

"Maybe we should actually spend more time with human primate energy issues, rather than the nonhuman primate nonissue," Bishop said.

To make sure his opposition to the bill was clear, Bishop also said: "As a matter of full disclosure, neither I nor any member of my family own a pet capuchin, a howler or a spider monkey. However, I admit that I'm not particularly fond of those annoying rally monkeys that seem to show up during the American League baseball playoffs."

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Hatch at the White House:

Sen. Orrin Hatch got one of the hottest tickets in town last week when he got to attend a social dinner at the White House in honor of American Jazz - the music, not the basketball team - and found himself seated at President Bush's table.

Though about 200 people attended the dinner in the East Room of the White House, only a few snagged a seat right next to the commander in chief. And only one got a personal greeting from Bush.

"I welcome members of my Cabinet and my administration; a music lover, Sen. Orrin Hatch from the great state of Utah; distinguished guests," Bush said in his opening remarks.

While Hatch has been a staunch supporter of the president and is a platinum-award-winning music writer, the Utah Republican's luck at this event might have something to do with his recent dialing-for-dollars work to raise cash for the Republicans' House and Senate campaign committees.

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Bennett cool to green A.C.:

The Senate's administration committee is talking about upgrading its old cooling equipment. The Capitol architect wants $200 million to completely revamp the system, making it environmentally friendly and banking excess electricity, which the Capitol can sell back to the power plant.

Utah Sen. Bob Bennett, the ranking member on the committee, winced at the price tag. "That's a tough sell," he said, according to a story in The Hill.

Committee Chairwoman Dianne Feinstein proposed remodeling the chillers to primarily use natural gas instead of coal or oil.

But Bennett didn't like that idea either, arguing that the Capitol would have to use so much natural gas that it would raise the prices for others.

"I have a holistic view of this whole thing," he said. "I'm concerned that focusing on greening the Capitol makes us feel good but shifts the carbon footprint some other place."

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Numbers, so confusing:

Rep. Chris Cannon went on and on about his new proposal to slash through any red tape on tapping oil shale resources in the West during an interview with Glenn Beck. Cannon extolled the virtues of oil shale and slammed critics of oil shale production. He tossed out number after number proving his point. But one eluded him.

"Thank you very much," Beck said at the end of the interview. "We'll look at the bill. What is the bill number?"

"Oh, it's - I think it's 6811, but I apologize," Cannon said.

Actually, it's HR 6211.

6811 is an invalid bill number. But, hey, he was close.

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* BURR AND CANHAM report for The Tribune from Washington. They can be reached at tburr@sltrib.com or mcanham@sltrib.com. For more political tidbits, check out http://blogs.sltrib.com/utahpolitics.