California Conservative

Thursday afternoon, I participated in a blogger conference call with Rep. Steve Scalise (R-LA), Rep. Cathy McMorris-Rogers (R-WA) and Rep. Marsha Blackburn (R-TN) on the cap and trade legislation that’s working its way through the House.

Rep. Scalise said that there are numerous parts of the bill that have provision numbers but don’t have language explaining what happens in those provisions. Once such provision is a section explaining how credits are traded. (It’s just a hunch but in a bill titled cap-and-trade, knowing how credits are traded would be an important provision. Then again, people didn’t know what was in the stimulus bill before the House and Senate passed it.)

Rep. Scalise also addressed the issue of job creation in yesterday’s hearing. Rep. Scalise said that EPA Administrator Jackson talked up the green jobs that would be created under Cap-And-Trade. When Rep. Scalise pressed Administrator Jackson on how she arrived this jobs figure, she admitted that she didn’t know how the administration arrived at that number.

UPDATE: I checked for a transcript of that exchange and found it here:

REP. STEVE SCALISE, R-La.: Administrator Jackson, in your opening statement you talked about the jobs that would be created – green jobs that would be created under a cap-and-trade bill. Can you quantify how many jobs you estimate would be created under this legislation?
MS. JACKSON: I believe what I said, sir, is that this is a jobs bill and that the discussion draft bill in its entirety is aimed to jumpstart our move into the green economy.
REP. SCALISE: And I think you quoted President Obama saying that it was his opinion that he would – that this bill would create millions of jobs. I think you used the term “millions.” Is there anything that you can base your determination on how many jobs will be created?
MS. JACKSON: EPA has not done a model or any kind of modeling on jobs creation numbers.

That’s a stunning admission. What Ms. Jackson just admitted is that the Democrats are making up numbers to sell Cap-And-Trade. Ms. Jackson just admitted, in sworn testimony, that she doesn’t know how many jobs Cap-And-Trade will create. (more…)