CAP AND TRADE IS BACK THIS MONTH

"You never want a good crisis to go to waste". Thank you Rahm "Dead Fish" Emanuel. And, they're piling it on, but for most of us who have lived in the real world, he's a rookie.  Bring it on.

Overlapping with the threat of government run health care will be Cap and Tax, and it's set to start a three-day hearing October 27th. The only thing is their new draft is conveniently unavailable to the voting public. Figure that, and so much for another broken campaign promise -- transparency.

Continuing their series on Cap and Trade, the Heritage Foundation writes:


A Call for Transparency
Waxman-Markey proposes a new national tax of historic proportions
October 20, 2009

As you read this, the Environmental Protection Agency is modeling the economic impacts of a semi-draft form of the Boxer-Kerry cap and trade legislation. “Environment and Public Works Chairwoman Barbara Boxer said a bill EPA is analyzing should be marked up in her panel by the second week in November. An EPA official said the agency has pledged to deliver the cost analysis Friday, in time for a three-day set of hearings starting Oct. 27.”

We’d do it too. But we can’t. According to Congressional Quarterly, the senators “produced a ‘semi-final draft’ of the legislation -- including the critical formula for distributing billions of dollars’ worth of pollution credits to different industries and interest groups.” But that draft is unavailable to the public. It has only been given to the EPA to model the economic impacts.

President Obama, in his memorandum for the heads of executive departments and agencies, wrote that “Government should be transparent. Transparency promotes accountability and provides information for citizens about what their Government is doing. Information maintained by the Federal Government is a national asset. My Administration will take appropriate action, consistent with law and policy, to disclose information rapidly in forms that the public can readily find and use.”

Bill Beach, the director of The Heritage Foundation’s Center for Data Analysis, wrote a letter to Senator Boxer (CCing Senator Kerry, EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson and Senator Inhofe) asking for a copy of the semi-draft legislation to model the economic effects of the bill.

Charles River Associates (commissioned by the National Black Chamber of Commerce), The American Council for Capital Formation (commissioned by National Association of Manufacturers) The Brookings Institution, the Energy Information Administration, the Congressional Budget Office, the Environmental Protection Agency, the Political Economy Research Institute and The Heritage Foundation all produced economic analyses of the Waxman-Markey House cap and trade bill, but only the EPA has the semi-draft legislation of the Boxer-Kerry version.

For the sake of transparency, we’d like the EPA or Senator Boxer to publicly release the most recent version of the Boxer-Kerry cap and trade bill that includes the all-important allocation of billions of dollars of allowances. Clearly the more details we have about the bill, the better economic analysis we can provide in a timely manner for Members of Congress and for the general public.


>> Visit Heritage's Rapid Response page for a collection of the latest research and policy resources on cap and trade.

CAP & TRADE COSTS FLY SKY HIGH

"You never want a serious crisis to go to waste", so says Rahm "Dead Fish" Emanuel, Hillary Clinton & Barack Hussein Obama. While we battle government run health care, Cap & Trade is over-lapping, with Sen. Barbara Boxer D-CA & John Kerry D-MA leading the way.

It's easy enough to throw up your hands, but if we do, the country we have known and loved will be seriously changed. So, onward Christian soldiers .... we continue to fight the good fight.

The continuing analysis of Cap & Trade's newest developments from the Heritage Foundation:


Cap and Trade Costs Fly Sky High
Waxman-Markey proposes a new national tax of historic proportions
October 6, 2009

When gas prices surpassed $4 per gallon last summer, it forced families to cancel their vacations. Not only was the day-to-day driving eating up families’ budgets, but it made the cost of traveling somewhere for vacation all that more expensive. Purchasing airline tickets was out of the question for many. If cap and trade becomes law, news could only get worse for the air travelers and the airline industry.

From CQ Politics: “The most recent draft of the Senate bill by John Kerry, D-Mass., and Barbara Boxer, D-Calif., includes aircraft and aircraft engines in its emissions-trading plan. The language tracks with provisions in a climate change bill the House passed in June.”
Cap and trade, which would artificially raise the price of energy, could cost the airline industry $5 billion dollars according to the article. When speaking about Waxman-Markey, Steve Sear, Delta Air Lines vice president of global sales, said passing cap and trade would result “in hundreds of millions of dollars in additional fuel costs that will either have to be absorbed or passed on to customers.”

On top of that, Sear went on to say that Waxman-Markey, officially known as the American Clean Energy and Security Act (ACES) would hurt the industry’s ability to innovate on its own:
“Those additional costs will undermine the ultimate aim of the act—to decrease carbon emissions—by making it difficult, if not impossible, for U.S. airlines to invest in the technology and alternative fuels that can reduce harmful greenhouse gases. ACES also would threaten our ability to provide jobs to thousands of U.S. workers, and airline service to hundreds of communities. It would put U.S. carriers in a competitive disadvantage against foreign airlines immune to the measure’s effects.”

Whether greenhouse gases are harmful is beside the point. An energy tax on any businesses will reduce the amount of money that can be spent on innovation and entrepreneurial activity that produce greater efficiency.

>> Visit Heritage's Rapid Response page for a collection of the latest research and policy resources on cap and trade.

A POLLUTION REDUCTION BILL?

More 'focus group' words in an attempt to pull the wool over the eyes of the American public. Are we really that dumb? I don't think so, but congress sure does.

Congress has obviously realized that "Cap & Trade" is not going over well with Americans, so how do they get the public on their side? Change the name so it sounds as though they really care. How does "Pollution Reduction and Investment" sound?

That would be laughable, if it were not so serious. It's another attempt to control major industries, collect more dollars from a weary public, and get rich in the process. Shades of the housing debacle. How many people got rich off of the backs of Americans, who are now losing their homes and their livelihood? This government is a trainwreck.

In their ongoing series of informative Cap & Trade reports, The Heritage Foundation writes:


A Pollution Reduction Bill?
Waxman-Markey proposes a new national tax of historic proportions
October 1, 2009

Well, that depends on what your definition of pollution is.

As the Senators Boxer and Kerry unveil their cap and trade bill, John Kerry’s recent pitch to the American public is yet another example of how mainstream environmentalists have sought to change the definition of pollution. As Kerry explained last week, the bill is not a “‘cap and trade’ proposal but a ‘pollution reduction’ bill. I don’t know what ‘cap and trade’ means. I don't think the average American does,’ Kerry said. ‘This is not a cap-and-trade bill, it’s a pollution reduction bill.’” To make this point clear, in the summary of the bill, Kerry and Boxer removed the phrase “cap and trade” and replaced it with “Pollution Reduction and Investment.”

Kerry’s statement points to the recent shift in environmental rhetoric which is less concerned about pollution being linked to smog and toxins in the air and water, and more concerned with what they believe to be the biggest problem: carbon. This new-found definition of pollution has permeated environmental rhetoric and has been heavily employed by the Obama administration. In his speech to the UN last week, Obama mentioned the disastrous consequences that will ensue from “greenhouse gas pollution” and “carbon pollution.” Furthermore, after the Waxman-Markey bill was passed in the House, Obama praised the effort saying that we have seen our reliance on fossil fuels “pollute the air we breathe and endanger our planet” and argued that “There is no longer a debate about whether carbon pollution is placing our planet in jeopardy. It’s happening.”

No longer a debate? Contrary to Obama’s statements, there is a very vigorous debate among scientists as to whether Co2—an invisible component of the human respiratory cycle—can be classified as a pollutant. What is abundantly clear is that the Senate climate change bill is less interested in pollution that is visible or proven to be harmful to human health and almost completely focused on a new-found definition of “carbon pollution.” This is most apparent in the opening sentence of the bill, which repeats the opening of the Waxman-Markey bill: “To create clean energy jobs, achieve energy independence, reduce global warming pollution, and transition to a clean energy economy.” The bill includes four titles that tackle greenhouse gas “pollution” and pushes for a 20 percent reduction in carbon emission by 2020, compared to the 17 percent reduction in the House bill.

With most of the emphasis being on Co2 and with very little being on proven harmful pollutants, Kerry’s claim that the bill is a “pollution reduction” bill is highly dubious; but there is no doubt that it is a cap and trade bill that will cause massive damage to the economy. As the United States begins to recover from a recession, is the country going to sacrifice the economy for these sudden amendments to the dictionary? Let’s hope not.

>> Visit Heritage's Rapid Response page for a collection of the latest research and policy resources on cap and trade.