Joined by Senators Joe Manchin, a Democrat from coal-rich West Virginia and Roy Blunt, a Republican from Missouri, Inhofe is also pushing a resolution insisting that any climate agreement shall have no force in the U.S. -- and no money spent to support it -- unless the pact has been submitted to the Senate for a vote.

The Obama administration has asked Congress to deliver the first $500 million of the climate aid already. Appropriators are negotiating an omnibus spending bill for fiscal 2016 that may reject the request.


Congressional Weapon

The climate finance pushback is the most powerful weapon Congress has to undercut a deal, said Steven Groves, a specialist on treaties who is a fellow at the Heritage Foundation, a Washington research group that favors small government.

“The deal here in Paris completely hinges on whether developing countries get the assurances that the money will be coming,” Groves said.

Obama struck a confident tone before leaving France on Tuesday, saying the U.S. will deliver the funding over time.

"This is not just one slug of funding that happens in one year,” he said at a news conference. "This is multiyear commitments that, in many cases, are already embedded in a whole range of programs that we have around the world. And my expectation is that we will absolutely be able to meet our commitments."

Obama’s opponents are trying to stoke skepticism in France, where representatives from 196 countries are attending a conference outside the capital scheduled to run through Dec. 11. Republican congressional staff are joining conservatives there in a bid to convince international negotiators that U.S. financial commitments are on shaky ground back home.

Promises Obama makes in Paris "would rest on a house of cards of his own making,” Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, a Republican from Kentucky, wrote in an opinion piece in the Washington Post Nov. 27. Even if Obama’s signature environmental regulation -- the Clean Power Plan -- survives court challenges from 27 states and a phalanx of other groups, "the next president could tear it up," McConnell wrote.

The threat, echoed by Inhofe in a white paper issued Tuesday and by Republicans on the campaign trail, isn’t realistic, regulatory specialists say.

“There is an effort by Congress to throw water on what President Obama is doing, but at the 30,000-foot level, none of what Congress can do or is doing is going to derail anything going on over there,” said Rob Barnett, a senior energy policy analyst with Bloomberg Intelligence. “It’s harder to roll back regulations than some people would like to imagine.”