Yes Vote on Waxman-Markey Energy-Rationing Bill

 ICECAP

CEI

UPDATE: Cap-and-Tax narrowly passes house by a razor thin 219 to 212 vote despite 44 NO votes from house Democarats thanks to 8 yes votes from Republicans. The yes votes (many from both parties) can count themselves among the millions of umemployed this bill will create come the next election when Americans realize what this bill has done to them and the economy. The next step is the senate where the close vote in the house, once assumed a sure thing, is in more doubt. Then with so much money and big firms heavily tied to this adminstration standing to hugely benefit from the bill, nothing can be certain. Money talks. We can talk but we don't count, at least not for another election cycle.

UPDATE: Cap-and-Tax

Friends � Last night, at 3:00 a.m., the House Democrats released a 300-page amendment to their 1,200-page national energy tax legislation.  No one - not one single Member of Congress - has read the bill that the Democratic Leadership is bringing up for a vote today.  Remember, Speaker Pelosi promised the American people at least 24 hours to read a bill before a vote in her "New Direction for America" document distributed in 2006 that remains on her website today.  Another broken promise from Washington Democrats.

So at the conclusion of his floor statement this afternoon, Republican Leader John Boehner will read the 300-page amendment on the House floor to America and the assembled Members of the House.  By House tradition, three Members have the right to deliver unlimited floor remarks - the Speaker, the Majority Leader, and the Minority Leader.  This is the House equivalent of the filibuster in the Senate.  We expect it may take a while, but Members of Congress, and - more importantly - the American people have a right know what the House is voting on.

You can view the floor proceedings on CSPAN or at http://www.c-span.org/.

Democratic Leaders Rush to Buy Off Special Interests

Washington, D.C., June 26, 2009 - The Competitive Enterprise Institute urges Members of the U.S. House of Representatives to vote later today against the Waxman-Markey energy rationing bill, H. R. 2454. The 1500-page plan would amount to the biggest tax increase in history and impose a huge range of government controls over energy use. 

The stakes are high, explains CEI's Director Energy and Global Warming policy, Myron Ebell.  "The Waxman-Markey bill would be the biggest tax increase in world history," said Ebell.  "Enacting Waxman-Markey would almost certainly make America a second-rate economic power.  Those Members of the House who vote for it are voting for long-term economic decline.

"The process for railroading this 1500-page monstrosity through the House has been outrageous," Ebell added.  "Members will be voting first and finding out what they have voted on later." The new, 1200-page version of the bill was released late Monday night.  But then late last night, Chairman Henry Waxman released an additional 309 pages, for a total of 1500.  Now, Democratic leaders are allowing a total of three hours of debate before a vote and allowing only one amendment to be offered. 

Ebell pointed to some of the falsehoods associated with the bill. 

"Supporters of Waxman-Markey are now claiming it will create jobs, which is ludicrous," said Ebell.  "If that were true, why did Democrats on the Energy and Commerce Committee defeat Republican amendments to suspend Waxman-Markey if gasoline reached five dollars a gallon or electric rates doubled or unemployment topped fifteen percent?  The Democratic leadership will not allow those amendments to be offered on the floor."

Meanwhile, Democratic leaders in the House are rushing to buy off hold-outs with "free" carbon credits. "Chairman Henry Waxman (D-Beverly Hills) has given away 85% of the ration coupons to various powerful special interests in order to gain support for the bill," said Ebell.  "Some people are going to become very wealthy from cap-and-trade, but it isn't going to be consumers."

We urge that voters contact their Representative immediately by calling the House switchboard at (202) 225-3121. Tell your Representative to vote No on H. R. 2454, the American Clean Energy and Security Act. Voters may also send their Member an e-mail by going to www.cei.org/1984 and clicking on the link to the action page.

Also courtesy of Paul Chesser this analysis from the Beacon Hill Institute:

The Economic Effects of Proposed Cap-and-Trade Legislation

President Obama and several members of Congress have proposed legislation to reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions in the United States. The Waxman-Markey Bill currently before Congress would bring GHG emissions, and hence carbon emissions, below 2005 levels in steps - 3% below those levels by 2012, 20% by 2020, 42% by 2030, and 83% by 2050.

Waxman-Markey would create a "cap-and-trade" system, under which U.S. producers would receive tradable permits to emit greenhouse gasses. Producers buying the permits would, in effect, pay a tax for the privilege of emitting greenhouse gasses currently emitted without charge. The resulting "carbon tax" would have an effect on production and employment similar to an explicit excise tax on production.

In this report, the Beacon Hill Institute (BHI) uses two computer modeling capabilities to estimate the economic effects of this tax on the Louisiana economy.

(Go to Web link for table of findings)

Cutting CO2 emissions by 83% over four decades - as proposed in the Waxman-Markey Discussion draft - might appear to be an easy goal, but the results indicate otherwise. The first point to note is that such cutbacks, whether done by the U.S. alone or in concert with others, would all be more expensive than doing nothing at all.

If the United States were to cut emissions alone, with no cutbacks (relative to trend) by other countries, it would bear the full cost of abatement (PV = $3.85 trillion) while reaping only about $0.27 trillion in benefits. This represents a net cost, relative to doing nothing, of $3.42 trillion. It would cost the United States $154 billion by 2020 and $1.318 trillion by 2050.

By 2045, the tax on carbon would need to rise to $714 per metric ton of carbon (equivalent to $195 per metric ton of CO2) to induce consumers to make the necessary cutbacks; from Table 1 we see that this would add $1.73/gallon to the cost of gasoline (in 2005 dollars) and 6.7 to 14.9 cents to a kWh of electricity - essential doubling the retail price of electricity.

The benefits are modest because by 2050 the U.S. would account for less than a sixth of world emissions of CO2; reducing U.S. emissions by 83% (relative to the 2005 level) by then would cut global emissions by just 11%, which would have a modest effect on climate, moderating the increase in global temperature by 2100 from 3.30C (the baseline no-controls case) to 3.12.

The Beacon Hill Institute used its STAMP (State Tax Analysis Modeling Program) model to estimate the resulting effects on the economy of selection of states.(2)

(1) William Nordhaus, 2008, A Question of Balance, Yale University Press.
(2) For a description about the model visit STAMP .