A Disgruntled Veteran on Energy Policy and “Cap & Trade”

My Electric Bill is HOW MUCH!?!

A Disgruntled Vet on Energy Policy and "Cap & Trade"

Bill Ernest Jr.

"At a time of great fiscal challenges, this legislation is paid for by the polluters who currently emit the dangerous carbon emissions that contaminate the water we drink and pollute the air we breathe." --President Obama (White House Press Conference, 6/23/09)[1]

"Under a cap-and-trade program, firms would not ultimately bear most of the costs of the allowances but instead would pass them along to their customers in the form of higher prices. Such price increases would stem from the restriction on emissions and would occur regardless of whether the government sold emission allowances or gave them away." --Terry M. Dinan, Sr. Advisor, Congressional Budget Office (CBO)[2]

Now, I love whales and polar bears just as much as the next guy; I love the birds and the bees and the flowers and the trees; and since I quit smoking over two years ago, nobody loves filling their lungs with good clean air more than I do. I think that it is disgraceful the way we have allowed the air quality to diminish the way that it has on our planet. In fact, if you ask me, more non-smokers get lung cancer from breathing the air outside than ever got it from their dinner table being next to the smoking-section at their neighborhood Applebee's. So, I am not here to debate Global Warming and while we could spend all day arguing the merits of "climate-change," I just think we can all agree that pollution is bad. Now, having said all that... the proposed H.R.2454 (the American Clean Energy and Security Act of 2009) is not the way to go about imposing needed changes in people's attitude toward the environment. You don't have to be a veteran, disgruntled or not, to see that times are tough in These United States of ours. Nearly double digit unemployment, daily bank failures, and a floundering stock market are but a few symptoms of the economic woes already facing this great nation. Americans are already struggling every single day to put food on the table...So, the time is definitely right to raise the average American's electric bill by 90%[3]? Really? Even if it was 9% (which it definitely is NOT, no matter whose numbers you use) or even 9 cents, the timing would not be right to place another new financial burden on our Greatest Natural Resource: our People?

The Republican's say it will cost American's $3100 a year and The Dims say "less than the cost of a postage stamp a day..." Who should you believe?

Terry M. Dinan, a senior adviser for the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office, in sworn testimony before the House Subcommittee on Income Security and Family Support concluded that a cap-and-trade system with a 15 % (Obama supports a 14%) cut in CO2[4] emissions would increase energy costs for American households that could run the average household about $1,600 in 2006 dollars (which, by the way, were worth more than the 2009 ones they're printing off 24hrs-a-day-7-days-a-week these days over at The Treasury): The costs range from $700 for the average household in the LOWEST one-fifth of all households, according to income, to nearly $2,200 for households in the top 20% of the population. Can you afford that? I can't.

She also testified as to the following:

• "Under a cap-and-trade program, firms would not ultimately bear most of the costs of the allowances but instead would pass them along to their customers in the form of higher prices. Such price increases would stem from the restriction on emissions and would occur regardless of whether the government sold emission allowances or gave them away."
• "Price increases would be essential to the success of a cap-and-trade program because they would be the most important mechanism through which businesses and households would be encouraged to make investments and behavioral changes that reduced CO2 emissions. Those increases, however, would impose a larger burden, relative to their income, on low-income households than on high-income households..."

•· "The rise in prices would impose a larger burden, relative to income, on low-income households than on high-income households for two reasons. First, low-income households spend a much larger fraction of their income than do high-income households. In addition, energy-intensive items compose a greater share of low-income households' total expenditures."[5]

Proponents of the Waxman-Markey Bill have called these estimates "simplistic and misleading"[6] because they fail to consider proposed rebates to consumers for energy costs, but to even qualify for the rebate you must make less than $23,000 (for a single person) or $43,000 for families with at least two children)... everyone else takes it in the wallet. These same Proponents are saying $175 a year, and the Environmental Protection Agency estimates the average cost per household to be between $98 and $140 per year. I would like to get that GUARANTEED and in writing, you jackals. Even Obama himself, during the campaign, said "...Under my plan of a cap and trade system, electricity rates would necessarily skyrocket."![7]

Of the Obama Plan, America's self proclaimed Billionaire Next Door Warren Buffet said recently in an interview on CNBC: "...it's a huge tax and there's no sense calling it anything else. I mean, it is a tax. And it's a fairly regressive tax. If we buy permits, essentially, at our utilities, that goes right into the bills of the utility customers and an awful lot of people in Iowa, in Oregon, and Utah, and places where we are, very poor people are going to pay a lot more money for electricity..."[8] The Proponents of this bill, who are themselves quite simplistic and misleading, fail to take in to account the added cost at every level of the production of every good (FOOD included!) and service that would be passed on (every tin-penny cent of it) to "the consumer" (and that is you and me and not "the polluters", as The President just promised[9]).

Let us not forget about the cost of lost jobs. Can this country afford to lose even one (1) more single job? Factories in foreign lands won't have to comply with U.S. law; this plan will force companies to move factories to other countries without such harsh restrictions and steep taxes. Are we going to force independent nations to comply with our EPA? How? ... Through the might of the UN[10]? ... Or with the blood of our sons and daughters? This bill has a provision for THREE years of mandated unemployment checks if you can prove Waxman-Markey (-Obama) put you out of work. They are outright admitting it will put even more Americans on the public dole. So, let's just keep those printing presses rolling. That isn't Stock-Footage they keep showing on the nightly news of them minting all those new bills, that's a live close-circuit-feed from Tiny Tim's office over at Treasury!

All guessing and estimating (and joking) aside, the best indicator of the future would be a current working model of the cap and trade program: The Wall Street Journal reported today (25 June 2009), that a similar tax in England is costing family's there about $1300 a years[11]. Can you afford that? Wasn't there once a revolution over some such nonsense? Who said that? Must've been a disgruntled vet... right, Nappy-Janet? ;-)

The real question is: Is this really good for America?

I don't think it takes an M.I.T. economist to figure that out.

--B.E.Jr. (25 June 2009)

[1] Remarks in Time Magazine...

http://thepage.time.com/obama-remarks-on-house-energy-bill/

[2] In testimony before the Subcommittee on Income Security and Family Support Committee on Ways and Means U.S. House of Representatives, March 12 2009...

http://www.cbo.gov/ftpdocs/100xx/doc10018/03-12-climateChange_Testimony.1.1.shtml

[3] The Heritage Foundation, report, revised and updated June 16, 2009...

http://www.heritage.org/Research/EnergyandEnvironment/wm2450.cfm

[4] Last I checked, we exhale that stuff and plants breathe it but let's not let third grade science get in the way of change we can believe in, right?

[5] Official Testimony found here...

http://www.cbo.gov/ftpdocs/100xx/doc10018/03-12-climateChange_Testimony.1.1.shtml

[6] April 1 2009, John Reilly, associate director for research at the MIT Joint Program on the Science and Policy of Global Change in a letter to congress.

[7] In a January 2008 meeting with the San Francisco Chronicle's editorial board...

ttp://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/blogs/opinionshop/month?blogid=42&year=2008&;month=01

[8] Live Lunch interview with Becky Quick, CNBC, 24 June 2009...

http://www.cnbc.com/id/31526815/page/3/

[9] Maybe the Prez meant that since humans emit CO2 we are all Polluters now. How does he plan to lower human carbon emissions by 14%? ... oh, yeah... the Government Health Care Plan... that should do, nicely! (Insert evil laugh here)...

[10] How's that workin' out for N. Korea?

[11] Printed in The Wall Street Journal, 25 June 2009, page A14