From Sammy Benoit at ‘The Lid’.
This past February, in a stunning disregard of their fiduciary responsibilities to the American People, the Congress voted on a stimulus bill that they hadn’t read. This one bill that singlehandedly increased the national debt by 160%. The bill was over 800 pages, and the members of the House received the bill at 11 pm the night before they were to vote on it. The vote couldn’t be delayed because Nancy Pelosi was going on vacation to Italy.
Nancy Pelosi is about to do it again, she has scheduled a vote on the 800+ page bill and while there is a little more time than the February incident it is clear by the bill’s support that many in Congress have not read the bill. Because if they had, they could not support it.
If they read the Waxman bill these Democrats would realize that not only will the legislation do nothing to help the environment, it will hurt the US Economy. Just take a look at the map above (click on it to see it larger). The states in green will do better under the plan, the ones in red, including Waxman’s sometimes home state of Florida, will have to pay much more in energy costs. What the map doesn’t reflect is the fact that manufacturing and production costs for all goods made in those states will become more expensive because of the increased energy costs, that greater expense will be passed to the consumer, causing inflationary pressure above and beyond all of that extra money the fed has been printing.
There is good news though, the vote will be close, if you call Congress today, there is still time to kill Cap-and-Trade, before it kills us:
Not Too Late To Kill ‘Cap-And-Tax’ Bill By ROBERT E. MURRAY
Perhaps the most destructive legislation in our country’s history will, as soon as this week, be voted on in the House of Representatives: the Waxman-Markey tax bill in the guise of addressing climate change.
It will have adverse and lingering consequences for every American. It will raise the cost of electricity in our homes, the fuel for our cars and the energy that produces our manufacturing jobs, with little or no environmental benefit.
Further, independent experts estimate that it will cost Americans more than $2 trillion in just over eight years.
All Americans in the Midwest, South and Rocky Mountain regions will be most drastically affected because the climate change legislation will destroy the nation’s coal industry and the low-cost electricity it has provided to these regions for generations.
Wealth will be transferred away from almost every state to the West Coast and New England.
The most abundant and by far least expensive energy source in our country for generating electricity is coal. America’s coal reserves rival the energy potential of Saudi Arabian oil.
Unfortunately, the proposed climate-change legislation in the House of Representatives, the Waxman-Markey bill, forces America to throw away this tremendous resource, and our low-cost electricity with it.
The legislation discards coal and low-cost energy with it by setting an unattainable cap on carbon dioxide emissions by 2020, with the first reductions due by 2012.
Under the program, businesses that emit carbon dioxide would be required to purchase or obtain from the government special carbon dioxide credits. This carbon dioxide cap will force utilities to switch from lower-cost coal to natural gas or other more expensive energy sources.
Reliable estimates show that this bill will cost each American family at least $3,000 more in energy costs each year, notwithstanding the $2 trillion cost to the economy in just eight years. The chief executive of one of the nation’s major utilities recently said it best in the Wall Street Journal:
“The 25 states that depend on coal for more than 50% of their electricity . . . will have to shut down and replace the majority of their fossil fuel plants as a result of the climate change legislation.”
The supporters of this ill-conceived legislation point to two provisions that they claim will help coal. The first is that they give electric utilities free credits. However, those credits are worth millions of dollars, and the utilities will be free to sell the credits and use the proceeds to build more expensive natural gas or nuclear power plants, and not use our lowest-cost fuel — coal.
Second, the authors of the legislation invest money in carbon capture and storage technology, claiming that this will save jobs. But this technology will not be commercially available for at least 15 to 20 years, long after the reductions are required in 2012 and long after our coal plants are shut down and our manufacturing jobs are exported to China, India and other countries.
All these countries have stated that they will not place any restrictions on carbon dioxide emissions. China alone, which has surpassed the United States in carbon dioxide emissions, brings a new 500-megawatt coal-fired power plant on line every week. They will have low-cost electricity, and America will massively export more jobs to them.
It is not too late to tell Congress to kill this flawed bill. Call your representative in Congress and ask him or her to vote no on the Waxman-Markey climate bill (otherwise known as cap-and-tax) and support affordable energy, American jobs and our quality of life.
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