Energy tax could deal Americans a bad hand

Senate Democrats unveiled a bill Wednesday that aims to cut greenhouse gasses by 20 percent by 2020. The House passed a bill in June that calls for a 17 percent emission cut by 2020. Carol Browner, assistant to the president on energy and climate change, ( global warming czar, was listed as one of 14 leaders of a socialist group's Commission for a Sustainable World Society, which calls for "global governance" and says rich countries must shrink their economies to address climate change) speaking at MIT earlier this year. She argued that U.S. businesses will have to invest more in clean-energy technologies once Congress passes a law with incentives for renewable energy and efficiency as well as a cap-and-trade system that limits heat-trapping greenhouse gases. "The point is we have to get started, we have to send a signal to the marketplace that we are going to be dealing with these (greenhouse gas) emissions in a different way," she said in an interview that was streamed live online and reported by CNET News.Com.

President Barack Obama's top aide on climate change acknowledged that legislation requiring major reductions in global-warming emissions is unlikely to pass Congress before December's Copenhagen summit on climate change. The Senate bill includes an economy-wide cap-and-trade system that would require power plants, industrial facilities and refineries to cut carbon dioxide and other climate-changing pollution. While there would be an overall emission cap, polluters would be able to purchase emission allowances to limit reductions. The bill, however, does not lay out how emission allowances would be distributed, an important issue left out to be resolved later. On Thursday, the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee held hearings on the theme of “Climate Change and National Security,” where Senator Barrasso (R-WY) expressed his concern that carbon markets could become a source for “funding streams to international organized criminal elements.”

Earlier this week, the Environmental Protection Agency went ahead with a program to see how carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases from stationary sources, such as power plants and factories, would be regulated under the Clean Air Act. But that is not the route that the Obama administration prefers, Browner said. Democratic Senators John Kerry and Barbara Boxer unveiled the senate version of the climate bill (Waxman-Markley comprehensive energy bill, known for short as "ACES) this week but it isn't clear whether it would win the required 60 Senate votes to get this bill passed.

No matter how many times the majority adds to this hand another giveaway to special interests, another tax break to offset the monumental cost of this bill, the end will be just the same: The taxpayer goes bust and Washington will win the game.  How big are the costs? Well, he cites the Congressional Budget Office, which estimated that the resulting increases in consumer prices needed to achieve just a 15-percent reduction in carbon dioxide--slightly less than the target of this bill--would raise the cost of living $1,600 a year, every year, for every family in America. That is a $1,600 tax on every American family every year.