Mark Tapscott: Lindsay Graham is the Senate's densest Republican
By: Mark Tapscott
Editorial Page Editor
October 15, 2009
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| Mark Tapscott |
And the winner of this week's (ig)Noble Award for Densest Senate Republican is .... Lindsay Graham. He thinks he's brokering a bipartisan deal on cap and trade. What he's really doing is pulling the Democrats' fat out of the fire on global warming.
(For those who think Olympia Snowe is more deserving of the award, she came up short this week because, frankly, nobody was really surprised by her vote Tuesday for Obamacare on the Senate Finance Committee. Providing "bipartisan" cover for Democrats comes easy for her.)
Earlier this year, House Democrats approved a 1,400-plus page Waxman-Markey cap-and-trade energy bill that was then promptly pronounced all but dead on arrival in the Senate. Now along comes the South Carolina GOPer to save the Democrats' second biggest priority, next to socializing doctors and patients.
Graham will trade a hollow promise from Democrats of more nuclear power and off-shore oil and gas development in return for his support of Waxman-Markey. He forgets that Democrats can promise anything like that now without fear because they know Environmental Protection Agency and the Sierra Club will keep it from ever actually being done.
So Graham's reach for back pats from Barack Obama, John Kerry and the editors of the New York Times will help Democrats put their $700 billion cap-and-trade program on the books. But a new Institute for Energy Research study shows that, even if cap and trade doesn't gut American prosperity for generations to come, Waxman-Markey is full of other provisions that will.
Did you know for example, that under Waxman-Markey, your local utility company will soon have to get 20 percent of the electricity it sells to you from "renewable" energy sources like solar, bio-mass and wind? No sweat, you say?
Think again, Bunky, because it will be decades before we can generate a fifth of our electric power needs from anything other than coal, nuclear or natural gas-powered power plants. In the meantime, it's still going to get awfully cold in the winter.
And did you know Waxman-Markey creates a new $1 billion tax on electric power produced by coal and natural gas-fired power plants? That money will go to fund commercialization of carbon-capture technology, which according to the Pew Center on Global Climate Change, will hike utility prices as much as 70 percent.
And did you know Waxman-Markey creates a new $1 billion tax on electric power produced by coal and natural gas-fired power plants? That money will go to fund commercialization of carbon-capture technology, which according to the Pew Center on Global Climate Change, will hike utility prices as much as 70 percent.
But wait, there's more. Waxman-Markey will take $7.5 billion of your hard-earned money to create the Clean Energy Deployment Administration, which will invest "green bonds" in new energy technologies the private sector considers too risky.
So, the same Washington politicians who recently invested hundreds of billions of our tax dollars on banks, Wall Street pirates, and U.S. car companies that can't make a profit are now going to decide where we get the energy to warm our homes, power our laptops, and grow food for our tables? I am not making this up.
Then there is the new $350 million Cash for Clunkers program for electric motors. Yes, the feds just spent $2.9 billion on the first Cash for Clunkers program to save American jobs by helping hundreds of thousands of folks replace their old Ford and Chevy sport utility vehicles with shiny new Toyotas and Hondas. This time it will work. Lindsay Graham promises.
Finally, Waxman-Markey turns Uncle Sam into a building czar by replacing all state and local building codes with one federal code. The bill also authorizes federal zoning to supplant state and local zoning procedures. You want to add a bedroom or carport to your house? Go to Washington for permission, buddy.
Meanwhile, as energy demand here in America and in places like China and India skyrockets, how much new oil, nuclear, natural gas, or coal resources does Waxman-Markey allow to be produced? Zero. Nada. Nothing.
Maybe Kerry will let Graham offer an amendment to buy us all new blankets.
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