by Mark Silva
"'Cap and trade' is a loser,'' says former Rep. Harold Ford Jr., a Democrat, and he supports the energy bill that the House has passed by the narrowest of margins.
It's the shorthand for the American Clean Energy and Securit Act, he suggests, that will drag down a bill that cleared the House by 219-212 and which, by most accounts, lacks the votes for passage in the Senate as it stands today.
"Cap and tax,'' the Republicans are calling it.
But, by any other name, the concept at the heart of the legislation -- capping the greenhouse gases that American industry produces and allowing companies to trade with one another for the rights to emissions that they need in their power-generation and manufacturing -- is critical to the goal of combatting global warming, advocates insist.
Republicans count on the cost of the bill to kill it. Republicans are denouncing it as "a national energy tax.''
But this is the "tax" they're talking about: The Congressional Budget Office has estimated that the average American household could pay an added $175 a year in energy costs by 2020 if this bill becomes law. By 2020. As if the average household won't be paying more for energy by then, with or without the legislation. And what, the supporters may remind a doubting public, will everyone be paying for pollution?
Ford, a former congressman from Tennessee who ran for Senate, maintains that sponsors must start framing the legislation as a matter of energy independence and energy security -- touting the alternative sources of energy, solar and wind, that will be
promoted as polluters are weaned from CO2-producing power. That was his message today in an appearance on MSNBC's Morning Joe.
The White House, which pushed the bill through the House -- with the help of eight Republicans who bucked their party's leadership -- will spend the next several days in a sales-campaign for a bill which President Barack Obama himself, making his own pitch to reporters on Sunday, called "an extraordinary first step'' toward energy independence and a cleaner environment. The administration says it will produce millions of new jobs.
That campaign will be made all the more difficult in the face of the "cap and tax'' argument, and the argument of Republicans such as Sen. Charles Grassley of Iowa that the only signs manufacturers will be hanging on their doors about jobs will be the ones that read: "Gone to China.''
Comments
For more then 35 years, since the inception of The Department of Energy, created by Congress and then, President Carter, foreign oil independence has been our goal, as a nation. For more then 35 years, through Republican and Democratic administrations, we have achieved, very little, towards that stated goal. Every time we have made a move to address the problems of energy consumption, the interested Corporations have opened up their vaults and allowed some of the money, they have gouged from us, consumers, to be spent, in defeating any attempts at correcting the problems !! We see it with the Oil Corporations, we see it with the Healthcare Corporations, with our attempts to rectify the injustices and greed of that economic construct. We are seeing it with the Pharmaceutical Corporations, in their attempts to protect their gouging ways, keeping the price of life-saving drugs at exorbitant levels !! All of these Corporations have one thing in common: Defeat any measures, President Obama and the Democratic Party bring forth, because it will kill our greed and give the people what they desperately need, need of relief, from the greed, of the Corporations. That is the strategy of the Republican Party, the Party of No !! No, to healthcare to millions of American citizens, who either, don't have any, or are being under-served, for what they are paying exorbitant prices !! No, to exorbitantly priced, life-saving drugs, that have paid for themselves, millions of times over !! No, to the end of the use of fossil fuels, that are choking our planet, and destroying our planet, Earth, that we wish our children to enjoy !! No, to clean air. No, to healthy citizenry No, to life-saving drugs, because of the price-gouging !! Is that why America elected President Obama and Vice-President Biden, to allow a minority of small-minded, selfish individuals, to continue to say No to the nation ??! I know we didn't and my hope, is these members of No, will wake up and consider all of the citizens of this great nation. Help President Obama and Vice-President Biden, get America on the right track, off of that side-track, that the incompetent tag team of Bush& Cheney left us !!
SUPPORT OUR TROOPS, BRING THEM HOME, ALIVE AND WHOLE. NOW.
Posted by: Don Fitzgerald, IL | June 29, 2009 9:32 AM
If this is such a great bill, why are the Dems trying to ram it through without even reading it? Before the MSM has had a chance to digest it and comment?
It reminds me of the $850 Stimulus Bill which was also rammed through without review. A Bill that many now conclude was badly flawed and didn't achieve what was intended.
IMO they ram these things through because they KNOW they can't stand the light of day. So much for transparancy and a "new kind of politics".
Posted by: JohnR | June 29, 2009 10:52 AM
What Democrats Harold Ford and Mark Silva don't tell you: the true costs of the bill lie in the higher costs of energy that the bill will, by regulation, impose. It isn't just the direct tax cost, but the indirect trillions of dollars on costs it imposes.
The bill will provide a windfall to Al Gore's companies. It will waste taxpayer dollars. It will cost consumers trillions. All for no measurable effect, positive or negative, on the climate.
Posted by: Faith You Can Believe In | June 29, 2009 11:07 AM
man is responsible for 4% of co2 emmisions... this will cut back to 2% by 2050 and tax the heck out of everyone... this is just a way to raise taxes on everyone... Obama lied about raising taxes.. plain and simple.. the cost is now being reported to over $2000 per year not $175. not including the increase in the price of gas. New jobs.. no backing to it. independent consulting firms state over 1 million lost.. as for green jobs... if carbon jobs are lost and replaced by green jobs it is not creation of jobs.. sum of job creation is 000. But at a cost to the companies to switch over... I dont know, but who pays for the new costs? The company will pass them along to the consumer... this is nothing more than a way to tax the U.S. for the globala warming scare that is over blown. 90% of scientists claim it is not man mad and cyclical. Wake up the gov. is no longer for the people but for themselves...
Posted by: Greg | June 29, 2009 11:16 AM
I don't care about the environment, I just want cheap electricity.We should remove ALL enviironmental regulation on the power industry. Let the power plant pour out as nmuch coal soot as they'd like. Quit making them spend extra to dump toxic waste, let thenm just pump it into streams. Think how much would be saved by those simple measures! I'm willing to put up with any amount of pollution to save a few cents, aren't you?
Posted by: Conservation hating Conservative | June 29, 2009 11:48 AM
Obama claimed that the average American would not bear the brunt of this historic tax-increase: he stated that instead "“It is paid for by the polluters who currently emit dangerous carbon emissions.”
Just compare this outrageous falsehood to Ronald Reagans' timeless quote:
"The most dangerous myth is the demagoguery that business can be made to pay a larger share, thus relieving the individual. Politicians preaching this are either deliberately dishonest, or economically illiterate, and either one should scare us.
...Only people pay taxes, and people pay as consumers every tax that is assessed against a business."
And after the way the rammed this through the House with little debate, without legislators even reading it... and while quarantining the GOP from any meaningful input whatsoever, any foolhardy individuals who still believe Obama's threadbare "bipartisanship" spiel ought to have their head examined.
http://reaganiterepublicanresistance.blogspot.com
Posted by: Reaganite Republican | June 29, 2009 4:45 PM
Unreported by the Swamp Democrats; Carol Browner, Obama's Energy Czar, admitted on tv that she hasn't even READ the Cap & Tax bill. See http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rbtEjj1MPiY&eurl=http%3A%2F%2Fhotair%2Ecom%2Farchives%2F2009%2F06%2F29%2Fvideo%2Denergy%2Dczar%2Dhasnt%2Dread%2Dcap%2Dtax%2Deither%2F&feature=player_embedded for the sad an embarrassing reality.
Posted by: Faith You Can Believe In | June 30, 2009 7:14 AM
I'd encourage the skeptics over the man-made climate change to think of the sky in Beijing.
The current consumption of dirty, noxious energy reminds me of human smoking habit.
Posted by: hsr0601 | June 30, 2009 1:10 PM
Global climate change used to be called: "Global Warming." Once documentation of earth's surface temperatures belied the trend in '08, the lib media and environmentalists quietly segued into the new moniker, "Global Climate Change, "which covers all the bases, come cooling or warming.
Remove CO2 and kill the trees. Kill the trees and eliminate O2. Eliminate O2 and kill the humans. Mission Accomplished, for the environmentalist movement!
Posted by: ThePartyofOwe | June 30, 2009 3:26 PM
No right-thinking person should or ought to object to any attempts to reduce pollution. However, given the potential of this bill to dramatically increase the cost of living, it should not have been rammed through the House without a proper and complete analysis (how many reps admitted to voting without reading it?).
As an aside to Don Fitzgerald, who peed on your grave to create all the vitriol poured into your posts?
Posted by: A Once & Future Skeptic | June 30, 2009 4:06 PM
Future Sceptic,
FITZ has always been cranky, but ever since his buddy Blago got impeached - he's been a little more cranky.
As far as global warming or climate change or what ever the name of the day is
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/2278797/posts
Posted by: Terry | June 30, 2009 7:57 PM
Capping carbon will make us MORE dependant on oil. Because every study suggests that the first steps after enacting this will be to shift from coal (even more carbon per BTU that oil) to oil, thus resulting in (1) less CO2 output (2) more energy imported and (3) higher costs--as coal is the 2nd cheapest source of electricity (nuclear is the cheapest).
Also, choosing 2005 (the peak of coal electrical production--look it up) makes this a giveaway to coal plants who will be able to cut back on electricity production and sell their credits they got for free; thus (1) make electricity more expensive while (2) they make more profit.
Even if you believe we can stop global climate change, this bill won't be doing it.
Posted by: Scott | July 6, 2009 8:38 AM
Property and individual rights if they were paramount would allow for protection against "pollution" if that's what everyone really wants.
Government creating standards for the allowable infringement of rights is why you're breathing poor air, eating poor food and drinking a known poison in your water (that and the fact the dollar just doesn't stretch as far as it used to for other very obvious reasons if anyone cared enough to look.)
You could legally protect yourself better if there weren't allowable infringements on your health.
Subsidies increase production.
Taxes increase the cost of production.
If you simply just can't get enough soy or corn products by all means continue our current policies.
If you simply want higher energy costs or expect the 3rd world to jump from burning things to efficient solar, nuclear, or geothermal, or what have you, by all means place further burdens upon their desire to advance in the same manner as we have.
Let's preach "energy independence" and ignore that we get most of our oil from scary sounding nations such as CANADA, and MEXICO...because it's CLOSER...and CHEAPER TO MOVE THINGS OVER SHORTER DISTANCES more often than not (this is a much more complicated subject but you get the picture. Oh, and let's scream about how terrible Iran is but let's completely ignore Saudi Arabia because they're #3 on the oil list. We'd really have liked Venezuela to fall in line but they've failed to do so, so we'll keep yelling about how terrible they are for nationalizing industry as we start to go about the same business here for less worthy reasons.)
Forgive me for going off topic. Go about your daily business.
Posted by: Mitch | July 7, 2009 7:09 AM