WASHINGTON, (Reuters) – President Barack Obama  scored a major victory yesterday when the U.S. House of  Representatives passed legislation to slash industrial  pollution that is blamed for global warming.

The Democratic-controlled House passed the climate change  bill, a top priority for Obama, by a vote of 219-212. As has  become routine on major bills in Congress this year, the vote  was partisan, with only eight Republicans joining Democrats for  the bill. Forty-four Democrats voted against it.

Climate change legislation still must get through the  Senate. Senators were expected to try to write their own  version but prospects for this year were uncertain.

After the House vote, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid  said he hoped the Senate can pass a bill “this fall.”

Obama praised the House for taking “historic action” and  urged the Senate to act. “It’s a bold and necessary step that  holds the promise of creating new industries and millions of  new jobs, decreasing our dangerous dependence on foreign oil,”  Obama said.

With the House action, Obama will be able to tout  significant progress toward tackling global warming after years  of foreign countries criticizing Washington for not  participating in international efforts.

The bill requires that large U.S. companies, including  utilities, oil refiners, manufacturers and others, reduce  emissions of carbon dioxide and other gases associated with  global warming by 17 percent by 2020 and 83 percent by 2050,  from 2005 levels. They would do so by phasing in the use of cleaner  alternative energy than high-polluting oil and coal.

At the core of the bill, which is around 1,500 pages long,  is a “cap and trade” program designed to achieve the emissions  reductions by industry.

Under the plan, the government would issue a declining  number of pollution permits to companies, which could sell  those permits to each other as needed.

Republicans said the bill was a behemoth that would neither  effectively help the environment nor improve an economy reeling  from a deep recession.

House Republican leader John Boehner called the measure  “the biggest job-killing bill that has ever been on the floor  of the House of Representatives.”

Representative Joe Barton, the senior Republican on the  Energy and Commerce Committee that played a key role in the  bill, said it would set unrealistic targets for cutting carbon  pollution. “You would have to reduce emissions in the United  States to the level that we had in 1910,” Barton said.

Both predicted higher prices for energy and other consumer  goods and more U.S. jobs being shipped abroad as companies try  to avoid the tough pollution-control requirements. Democrats  said consumers mostly would be protected from price hikes.