The Cap and Tax Fiction

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has put cap-and-trade legislation on a forced march through the House, and the bill may get a full vote as early as Friday. It looks as if the Democrats will have to destroy the discipline of economics to get it done.

Despite House Energy and Commerce Chairman Henry Waxman’s many payoffs to Members, rural and Blue Dog Democrats remain wary of voting for a bill that will impose crushing costs on their home-district businesses and consumers. The leadership’s solution to this problem is to simply claim the bill defies the laws of economics.

Their gambit got a boost this week, when the Congressional Budget Office did an analysis of what has come to be known as the Waxman-Markey bill. According to the CBO, the climate legislation would cost the average household only $175 a year by 2020. Edward Markey, Mr. Waxman’s co-author, instantly set to crowing that the cost of upending the entire energy economy would be no more than a postage stamp a day for the average household. Amazing. A closer look at the CBO analysis finds that it contains so many caveats as to render it useless.

The whole point of cap and trade is to hike the price of electricity and gas so that Americans will use less. These higher prices will show up not just in electricity bills or at the gas station but in every manufactured good, from food to cars. Consumers will cut back on spending, which in turn will cut back on production, which results in fewer jobs created or higher unemployment. Some companies will instead move their operations overseas, with the same result.

When the Heritage Foundation did its analysis of Waxman-Markey, it broadly compared the economy with and without the carbon tax. Under this more comprehensive scenario, it found Waxman-Markey would cost the economy $161 billion in 2020, which is $1,870 for a family of four. As the bill’s restrictions kick in, that number rises to $6,800 for a family of four by 2035.

Even as Democrats have promised that this cap-and-trade legislation won’t pinch wallets, behind the scenes they’ve acknowledged the energy price tsunami that is coming. During the brief few days in which the bill was debated in the House Energy Committee, Republicans offered three amendments: one to suspend the program if gas hit $5 a gallon; one to suspend the program if electricity prices rose 10% over 2009; and one to suspend the program if unemployment rates hit 15%. Democrats defeated all of them. link

This is a scam of epic proportion and not surprisingly, the lamestream and state controlled media is, as usual, nowhere to be found.

This bill will be upwards of 1500 pages and will touch every single citizens’ life in many (mostly adverse) ways, yet the majority of our so called leaders will never even read the bill, or know what is contained within, before casting their votes. What a bunch on non-representing representatives!

Even in the most rosy scenario, this plan will only lower temps by two tenths of one degree by 2100, achieving nothing, even if it goes as planned.

All of these costs accrue in the first 25 years of a 90-year program that, as calculated by climatologists, will lower temperatures by only hundredths of a degree in 2050 and no more than two-tenths of a degree at the end of the century.

The impact of Waxman-Markey on the next generation of families is $1,241 per year in higher energy costs, over $100,000 of additional federal debt (above and beyond the unconscionable increases already scheduled), a weaker economy, and more unemployment. Furthermore, the recently proposed modifications to Waxman-Markey only make these problems worse: By devising a less-efficient pattern of government expenditures, this new draft would more than offset the gains from the proposed slight easing of targeted emissions reductions for 2020.

And all for a change in world temperature that might not be noticeable. link

Call or your representatives NOW and tell them NO to this insane tax increase, which is unlikely to have the desired effect anyway.

Only a sucker or a fool wouldn’t be able to see through this farce to realize that this legislation is simply a scam to increase taxes on an already overtaxed population. Anyone who believes this misguided and untimely cap & TAX scheme will save the world needs their head examined.

It’s all about making the powerful, rich and greedy, even more powerful, richer and greedier.

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