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Tripartisan: After the failure of last year’s cap-and-trade bill, (Left to right) Sens. Lindsey Graham, Joe Lieberman and John Kerry hope new... View Enlarged Image
Energy Policy: Watch out when sweeping new legislation comes with a "bipartisan" label. Usually it's a bad, repackaged measure undeserving of passage. Case in point: the new energy bill.
Sens. John Kerry, D-Mass., Joe Lieberman, I-Conn., and Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., are working feverishly to craft a "tripartisan" approach for a new cap-and-trade bill.
The goal reportedly is to slash carbon emissions 17% by 2020 and 80% by 2050. Unlike the past efforts, which relied on a one-size-fits-all approach, this one will have separate caps on carbon output for manufacturers and utilities. It also boosts offshore drilling and nuclear power.
Even business groups, notably the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, have made favorable noises about the bill. But don't be fooled.
This will be another massive tax on consumers and industry. Industry foes, of course, will be bought off with rebates, subsidies, protectionist rules and other goodies. You'll be left holding the bag.
The feeding frenzy has already begun, as noted earlier this month by Competitive Enterprise Institute Fellow Iain Murray:
"Manufacturing-state senators want billions of dollars to compensate industry. Farm-state senators want billions of dollars for agricultural producers. Nuclear-state senators want billions of dollars for carbon-free nuclear power. Coal-state senators want billions of dollars for clean-coal technology. Senators from natural-gas states want billions of dollars for fuel-switching."
And on and on. You get the idea. "Bipartisan" becomes a metaphor for "bought off." Everyone gets something — everyone, that is, except the poor, lonely, foolish taxpayer who stands at the end of this ugly daisy chain, wallet in hand, paying for it all through higher taxes on every watt, joule and BTU of energy he or she uses.
And make no mistake, the economic costs will be staggering.
A team of economists at the Heritage Foundation recently ran the numbers on the Boxer-Kerry cap-and-trade bill, similar in most respects to the new bill. If passed, it would by the year 2035:
• Reduce GDP by an inflation-adjusted $9.9 trillion.
• Levy $4.6 trillion in new energy taxes on Americans, with the poor being hardest hit.
• Kill 2.5 million jobs.
• Lift energy costs for a family of four an average $1,000 a year.
• Raise costs for goods and services by $3,000 a year.
• Reduce average family net worth by $40,000, while raising its share of the national debt by $27,000.
See anything in that list you like?
With oil prices surging back above $80 a barrel — remember what a big issue that was for the media when George W. Bush was in office? — we don't need a new tax on energy. What we need is new energy, period — "bipartisanship" be damned.
Taxing us to death won't help. We need to go after the energy we have available now: Literally trillions of barrels of oil in shale deposits and offshore, and quadrillions of cubic feet of natural gas trapped below ground and underwater across our country.
People forget that our current economic morass was in part caused by soaring energy prices. Isn't it time we tapped our own plentiful resources and got back ahead of the energy curve?
Homeland Security: Forget about foreign jihadists getting nukes or planting bombs in their underwear. The real enemies, some say, are domestic militia groups who play at war and those nasty Tea Party racists. The raid on a Michigan militia group accused of plotting war against the government ...
Nuclear Terror: So it's official. The CIA reports that Iran can build a nuclear weapon. What is our policy now? Cross our fingers and hope a mushroom cloud doesn't rise above a major city? British historian Paul Johnson titled one of the chapters of "Modern Times," his sweeping moral ...
HSAs: Revenue-hungry Democrats have spared a choice tax break — one available even to the rich — and preserved one of the GOP's favorite plans. Could real health care reform be advancing under the radar? By all political and fiscal logic, health savings accounts should be on their ...
The arrests of members of a Michigan-based "Christian" militia group should convince doubters that there is good reason to worry about right-wing, anti-government extremism — and potential violence — in the Age of Obama. I put the word Christian in quotes because anyone who plots to ...
For as long as we can remember, the U.S. Supreme Court has included at least one military veteran. Recent examples include Republican-appointed Chief Justice William Rehnquist, who died in 2005, and Justice John Paul Stevens, who is expected to resign this year. The Democrats have not placed a ...
Posted By: anotherindyfilmguy(325) on 3/31/2010 | 1:02 AM ET
I think it is their goal: To kill America. It has to be. Otherwise it is insanity in action. Treason against the economy that feeds and shelters everyone is treason against the country. Can the legislatures of these asshats home states indite them for treason?
Posted By: Osamas Pajamas(1620) on 3/31/2010 | 12:48 AM ET
Cap the taxers.
Posted By: freethinking(60) on 3/30/2010 | 11:42 PM ET
http://www.tnr.com/blog/the-vine/was-w-cap-and-trade-fan Last week, The Hill's Briefing Room found a passage in former Bush speechwriter Matt Latimer's juicy new tell-all, Speech-less, that might be the book's most shocking nugget: In an early 2008 speech, Bush had originally planned to endorse cap-and-trade before being talked out of it by a "small but merry band of conservatives in the White House.
Posted By: freethinking(60) on 3/30/2010 | 11:41 PM ET
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB125011380094927137.html Cap-and-trade got a big boost in 1990, when President George H.W. Bush signed amendments to the Clean Air Act that imposed new limits on emissions of sulfur dioxide, which produces acid rain. Economists said the move let producers save billions of dollars and still hit their targets
Posted By: Diogenes60025(50) on 3/30/2010 | 11:39 PM ET
The proposed bill is just a tollgate on the energy economy. Fossil fuels are the raw material for wealth creation. The sponsoring Senatoads and their rent-seeking facilitators persist in trying to beat more money out of a dying horse. This economy is not able to generate more money for redistribution to worthy causes chosen by 535 nincompoops. Spending the accumulated wealth of this once great nation on regulating carbon dioxide is a fools' errand.
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