Henry Waxman: “I also want to warn you that as hard as we’ve been working, the pace is going to accelerate over the next four weeks.” We better get to reading, as the U.S. Congress prepares to pass yet another gigantic overhaul of fundamental American systems really, really fast. This time, they’re regulating energy consumption. You know, energy: the basis of all industry, the very engine of a productive society, the thing that moves your Cheetos, lights your cubicle, and warms your children. The bill has been up for discussion in the House Energy and Commerce Committee today, and Waxman and Co. are vowing to ram it through the Congress before the percentage of people who believe global warming is a serious problem created by man (and therefore worth risking the basis of our economy) drops below the current, modest 34 percent. Obama administration officials are going out of their Orwellian way to call the bill an “economic boon” and a “jobs bill,” despite the fact that it taxes the very basis of modern society. There is wide disagreement on how much the bill would cost American taxpayers, with the EPA providing a rather small number, buoying Democrats:
According to Lisa Jackson’s number-crunching crew at EPA, households would pay between $98 and $140 a year through 2050 for overhauling the country’s energy landscape. Economy-wide, the impacts also seem pretty modest. It will take until 2030 for the national GDP to reach $22.6 trillion; if cap-and-trade is passed, that will just take three months longer.
That’s somewhat lower than the $215-per-household number touted by liberal bloggers and arrived at by MIT professor John Reilly, who took issue with Republicans using his study to claim a $3,100-per-household cost:
According to an MIT study, between 2015 and 2050 cap and trade would annually raise an average of $366 billion in revenues (divided by 117 million households equals $3,128 per household, the Republicans reckon).
Too bad Reilly himself seems to have miscalculated the cost by about $600, and likely much more, according to an interview conducted with THE WEEKLY STANDARD’s John McCormack:
During a lengthy email exchange last week with THE WEEKLY STANDARD, MIT professor John Reilly admitted that his original estimate of cap and trade’s cost was inaccurate. The annual cost would be “$800 per household”, he wrote. “I made a boneheaded mistake in an excel spread sheet. I have sent a new letter to Republicans correcting my error (and to others).” While $800 is significantly more than Reilly’s original estimate of $215 (not to mention more than Obama’s middle-class tax cut), it turns out that Reilly is still low-balling the cost of cap and trade by using some fuzzy logic. In reality, cap and trade could cost the average household more than $3,900 per year. The $800 paid annually per household is merely the “cost to the economy [that] involves all those actions people have to take to reduce their use of fossil fuels or find ways to use them without releasing [Green House Gases],” Reilly wrote. “So that might involve spending money on insulating your home, or buying a more expensive hybrid vehicle to drive, or electric utilities substituting gas (or wind, nuclear, or solar) instead of coal in power generation, or industry investing in more efficient motors or production processes, etc. with all of these things ending up reflected in the costs of good and services in the economy.”
Read John’s whole report on this. The GOP message so far on this is muddled, but economic dire straits understandably make Americans wary of hiking taxes on…did I mention energy is involved in everything you buy?
But as Democrats charge forward, Republicans have yet to produce an energy plan. Boehner told ABC’s George Stephanopoulos that he thinks the Republicans will produce a plan on climate change, but he offered no details about what it might be or when it might come. Boehner has tasked Indiana Republican Rep. Mike Pence’s American Energy Solutions working group with working out the details of the Republican alternative. House Republicans are focusing on the costs of a cap-and-trade system, warning that the new regime would raise regulatory costs on businesses and increase energy prices, particularly for consumers in the Midwest. In a briefing with reporters Tuesday, Pence called the Democrats’ proposal “a declaration of economic war on the Midwest by liberals on Capitol Hill.” The ranking member on the House Energy and Commerce Committee, Rep. Joe Barton (R-Texas), made similar points in his opening statement Tuesday. “How many businesses have folded, or will fold, because of skyrocketing energy prices?” he asked. “How much higher must unemployment creep before we realize that we are sabotaging our way of life in the name of carbon dioxide?”
I’m thinking a simple “here they go again” message would work with a bailout-weary public, and the 648 pages of climate bill are surely home to a thousand data points to bolster it. Let’s get to reading. We’ll likely be far ahead of most of Congress.
