California Conservative

Politico.com is reporting that the House of Representatives passed a “climate change bill.” It didn’t do anything of the sort. It passed a gigantic tax increase. Now the bill goes to the Senate where alot of Democrats will try avoiding it like they’d avoid giving a straight answer.

Democrats narrowly passed historic climate and energy legislation Friday evening that would transform the country’s economy and industrial landscape.

But the all-hands-on-deck effort to protect politically vulnerable Democrats by corralling the minimum number of votes to pass the bill, 219-212, proves that there are limits to President Barack Obama’s ability to use his popularity to push through his legislative agenda. Forty-four Democrats voted against the bill, while just eight Republicans crossed the aisle to back it.

Politico.com says that this is historic climate and energy legislation in these paragraphs, then undercuts that claim here:

Despite the tough path to passage, the legislation is a significant win for House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Ca.) and the bill’s two main sponsors, House Energy and Commerce committee chairman Henry Waxman (D-Ca.) and Massachusetts Rep. Edward Markey (D), who modified the bill again and again to get skeptical members from the Rust Belt, the oil-producing southeast and rural Midwest to back the legislation.

In other words, they threw environmental considerations aside when it fit their needs. Collin Peterson’s early dissent was bought off by a tiny smattering of meaningless trinkets. I’ve said repeatedly that the National Energy Tax was a tax increase masquerading as environmental policy. Tonight, I’m adding that this bill’s intent was to control people’s lives with government regulations and exhorbitant taxation.

The Heritage Foundation has a chart showing the economic damage that this legislation would’ve caused in each congressional district. Here’s a brief summary of what the chart will show:

The table below lays out six congressional district specific data points:

1.Gross State Product Loss in 2012: This number is the amount of economic destruction that will occur in that district in the first year of the cap-and-trade regime.
2.Average Gross State Product Loss, 2012-2035: Same as above, only it is the average economic destruction in the district for the bill’s first 24 years.
3.Personal Income Loss in 2012: This number represents the reduction in consumer spending power in a district in the first year of the cap-and-trade regime.
4.Average Personal Income Loss, 2012-2035: Same as above, only it is the reduction in consumer spending power in the district for the bill’s first 24 years.
5.Non-Farm Job Loss in 2012: Jobs are jobs, and in the first year of the cap-and-trade regime, each district will have significantly less than they otherwise could.
6.Average Non-Farm Job Loss, 2012-2035: This number is crucially important because it demonstrates that no district gains jobs, even in the long run; the increase in “green jobs” does not outweigh the decrease in jobs elsewhere.

The NRCC is poised to go after Blue Dog Democrats that caved to Speaker Pelosi on this legislation. This will be the undoing of many Democrats that sit in swing districts. Voting against Waxman-Markey won’t help Southern Democrats much either.

Fred Krupp’s quote is mostly hyperbole:

“The American Clean Energy and Security Act is the most important environmental and energy legislation in our nation’s history,” said Fred Krupp, the president of the Environmental Defense Fund (EDF). “Today’s vote is a huge achievement for the country and the climate.”

This bill has nothing to do with the environment. It’s always been a huge tax increase, nothing more. That isn’t my opinion. It’s what Rep. John Dingell said about it:

Then Candidate-Obama said this about his National Energy Tax bill:

I was the first to call for a 100% auction on the cap and trade system, which means that every unit of carbon or greenhouse gases emitted would be charged to the polluter. That will create a market in which whatever technologies are out there that are being presented, whatever power plants that are being built, that they would have to meet the rigors of that market and the ratcheted down caps that are being placed, imposed every year.

So if somebody wants to build a coal-powered plant, they can; it’s just that it will bankrupt them because they’re going to be charged a huge sum for all that greenhouse gas that’s being emitted.

In addition to this bill’s being a major tax increase, possibly the biggest in U.S. history, it’s also about killing jobs and destroying our economy at a time when it’s in bad shape. Before the House passed the stimulus bill without reading it, President said that the U.S. economy was headed for a catastrophe if his bill wasn’t enacted. If this bill becomes law, it will be a catastrophe of his own making.

If this bill becomes law, it might well be the end of Speaker Pelosi’s reign of terror. We can only hope.

Technorati Tags: Taxes, National Energy Tax, Energy, Environment, Economy, President Obama, Bankruptcies, Speaker Pelosi, Henry Waxman, Ed Markey, Democrats

Cross-posted at LetFreedomRingBlog

This entry was posted on Saturday, June 27th, 2009 at 7:38 am and is filed under Author: Gary Gross, Economy, Energy, Environment, Obama, Pelosi, Special Interests, Taxes. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.