The Cap and Tax JOKE is On Us

Congress crams this monster bill down our throats on a summer Friday night, when most of us are gathering with friends or family, looking forward to heading to the beach or a baseball game this weekend. The CBO knuckles under to their Congressional overlords, giving us phony-baloney numbers. Dem leaders are actually horsetrading on the House floor, changing the bill while final debate is going on, paying off this interest group and that to buy votes--but let the real buyer beware--it's us, the taxpayer left holding the bag. Liz Peek, in a FoxNews opinion piece:

If the Waxman bill is so controversial, why have we not heard much about it? You can thank the Congressional Budget Office for that. Unlike their riveting assessment that proposed healthcare legislation would increase the federal deficit by $1.0 trillion between 2010 and 2019 and still leave 37 million uninsured, the CBO's figures for the impact of the Waxman bill are relatively benign. They estimate that the legislation will cost the average American family only $175 per year -- not an unreasonable price to pay for cleaner air, you might say.

However, this assessment only covers the implementation of the cap-and-trade aspect of the bill, and not the costs of federal spending for new technologies or the cost of meeting mandates on energy efficiency. It also does not take into account the possibility of tariffs levied on high-carbon imports. In other words, it does not reflect the fact that your new toaster may have to use less energy, and the accomplishment of that goal may end of costing you more.

Also, the CBO analysis relies on one extremely questionable assumption -- that the revenues collected from the sale of allowances, or emissions permits, are recycled back to consumers. That is, the cost to consumers is significantly higher than $175 per household; that figure is reduced by presumed "rebates" aimed at offsetting the higher costs that industry will presumably pass onto consumers.

How much is that increased cost? Congressman Markey (D-Mass.) says in a press release that the government will raise $846 billion over the next decade in revenues. These funds, according to Markey, will be dedicated to "assist consumers with the transition to a clean energy economy at least 50% will go back to consumers."

A sober assessment of the government's budget situation over the next decade would lead some to think that there is about as much chance of cap-and-trade revenues being recycled back to taxpayers as there is of Nancy Pelosi taking command of the CIA. The government is looking high and low for revenues to fund healthcare legislation and a slew of other programs; this torrent will be just too delicious to give up.

All this to reduce the temperature over a hundred years by a barely discernible amount, if that--the recent warming cycle has cooled the last several years, so it could be sunspots, or natural cloud changes, not man that influence the planet. (And there's the EPA's own suppressed report.) Perhaps the eco-zealots will try to harness the sun next. What are TRILLIONS in the quest for eco-perfection?These people are NUTS! And our Congressman Mark Kirk is one of them. The leader of all this in Congress is Democrat Henry Waxman, who represents Beverly Hills, the pampered elites who would wilt without their creature comforts--and that's all you need to know.

The joke is on us.

We'll pay for this over and over again in lost jobs (pedi-cabs?!, even as China and India take over our jobs) higher taxes, horrendous utility bills, nanny state nazis invading our homes, and subsidies for massive fraud, while starving us of the energy we need, unless we THROW THESE TOTAL FOOLS OUT!

P.S. And call your Senators to kill this thing. We have two bleepin golden ones in Illinois and a wannabe in Kirk. (FAIL)

P.P.S. Everyone wants cleaner green energy if possible, but wind and solar are not efficient enough to do the job--even if we had enough of it, nor is conservation, and it will take years to bring clean, green nuclear online even if we started now, which I don't see happening. We need to drill here, drill now--way offshore, before the Chinese siphon it off via Cuba, do the belly-button incision drill in ANWR's swamp, COME ON! And at least Gov. Sarah Palin is building a pipeline from Alaska to the lower 48, after it had been stalled for 30 YEARS, so that clean natural gas isn't wasted up there and can help ensure our energy security.