Dirty Little Secret Exposed
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.
Rep. Scalise said that the National Association of Manufacturers has done a study on jobs created. Rep. Scalise and Rep. John Shimkus addressed that in this exchange with Administrator Jackson:
REP. SCALISE: And, I mean, while you might not be a jobs expert, you’re obviously talking about, you know, and touting this bill as a jobs bill. If you would claim that it would create jobs, are you making an assumption that it won’t lose any jobs, that no jobs will be lost? Or if you don’t make that claim, how many jobs would you expect to be lost? Because groups have made very large claims. I mean, the National Association of Manufacturers claims our country would lose 3 to 4 million jobs as a result of a cap and trade energy tax.
So I just wanted to know if you or any members of the panel want to answer that question.
MS. JACKSON: I’ll go first and –
(Cross talk.)
REP. SCALISE: – if you would.
MS. JACKSON: I know that lobbyists keep playing large doomsday scenarios – quiet deaths for businesses across the country. That’s what lobbyists said about the Clean Air Act in 1990 and it didn’t happen. In fact, the U.S. economy grew 64 percent…
…REP. JOHN SHIMKUS, R-Illinois: Let me ask Administrator Jackson. Do you know how many jobs – coal miner jobs were lost in Ohio because of the Clean Air Act amendments which you were addressing earlier?
MS. JACKSON: No, sir.
REP. SHIMKUS: Thirty-five-thousand.
Let’s put these exchanges in context: The EPA administrator started by saying that her boss, our president, made the bold statement that Cap and Trade would create millions of jobs. The minute she was challenged, though, she admitted that she didn’t know how HER DEPARTMENT arrived at the job creation numbers. Furthermore, Rep. Shimkus told Administrator Jackson that 35,000 coal mining jobs were lost in Ohio as a result of EPA regulations done under the authority of the Clean Air Act.
While I won’t say that this testimony proves that jobs will be lost, I’m perfectly willing to admit that I’ll trust NAM’s job loss figures more readily than I’ll trust Administrator Jackson’s or President Obama’s job creation numbers. I’ll further state that I can’t prove that this administration’s job creation numbers aren’t pure fiction created purely for public consumption.
This administration just got caught telling something that, at best, can’t be proven and that, at worst, is an outright fabrication.
When my representative, Michele Bachmann, invited Chris Horner to speak at St. Cloud State, the St. Times’ article quoted Bob Weisman, professor of meteorology at St. Cloud State. Here’s what Professor Weisman said:
Despite disagreeing with him “100 percent, politically,” Weisman said he agreed with Horner that the Obama administration’s cap-and-trade program likely won’t do anything to effect climate change. “Like the Kyoto treaty, it won’t bring down global warming,” Weisman said. “You’d need something more like a 40 percent cut in emissions (to do that).”
It’s 2 + 2 time. Based on Administrator Jackson’s testimony, we aren’t certain that Cap and Trade will create the green jobs like President Obama claims. We also know, based on Professor Weisman’s statement, that Cap and Trade won’t really “bring down global warming.” According to this report for the National Association of Manufacturers, jobs would be lost as a result of Cap And Trade:
Key Finding: Based on the allowance price profiles derived for the two ACCF/NAM cases, S. 2191 is projected to yield significant employment loss due to the loss of revenues resulting from higher fuel and electricity costs. In 2020, job loss is projected to range from 1.2 million (Low Cost case) to 1.8 million (High Cost case) jobs/year, and from 3 million jobs (Low Cost case) to 4 million jobs in 2030.
Under S. 2191 the U.S. economy would begin to shed approximately 850,000 jobs a year by 2014 under the low cost scenario (see Figure 5). This is primarily a result of higher carbon prices resulting in higher fuel costs for industry and higher cost to industry to comply with emissions limits. As the cap becomes more restrictive and the economy has less freedom to deal with reducing emissions, carbon prices and fuel prices increase rapidly, leading to greater job losses of between 1.2 and 1.8 million jobs in 2020 and between 3 and 4 fewer million jobs in 2030 (see Figure 5). These job losses are net of the new jobs which may be generated by increased spending on renewable energy, energy efficiency, and carbon capture and storage.
Summarizing everything, it looks like this: Congressional Democrats and the Obama administration say Cap and Trade will create jobs but they can’t prove it. Congressional Democrats and the Obama administration say Cap and Trade is good environmental policy but a professor of meteorology says the only way Cap and Trade will impact temperatures is if we cut emissions by 40 percent. Meanwhile, NAM insists that green jobs won’t produce a net gain in jobs. Quite the opposite: There might be a significant loss of jobs, which likely would hurt America’s job growth and economic growth for at least a decade.
Why should Cap and Trade be implemented when the potential job losses could be significant? Why should we sit silently while legislation is enacted that has marginal impact on climate change? Why shouldn’t we defeat this bill when this legislation would cause families’ energy bills to skyrocket?
MESSAGE TO PRESIDENT OBAMA: Put down the kool aid, Back away from the envirowhackos. Screw your head on straight. And by all means, think things through instead of listening to the environmental extremists.
Technorati Tags: Cap And Trade, Job Growth, Job Losses, Environment, President Obama, Climate Change, Tax Increases, Democrats, Bob Weisman, Marsha Blackburn, Steve Scalise, Michele Bachmann, Energy Prices
Cross-posted at LetFreedomRingBlog