Ten Senate Democrats recently expressed their concern over cap and trade legislation that would dramatically increase energy prices and particularly hurt the country’s manufacturing base. In a letter sent to the White House, Senators from Ohio, Indiana, Michigan, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Minnesota and West Virginia wrote: As Congress considers energy and climate legislation, it is important that such a bill include provisions to maintain a level playing field for American manufacturing. Manufacturing accounts for more than 10 percent of our economy and nearly three-fourths of the nation’s industrial research and development. …
The idea behind cap and trade is to reduce carbon dioxide emissions by putting a price on the right to emit carbon and other greenhouse gases on businesses. Since 85 percent of America’s energy needs are met through carbon-emitting fossil fuels, cap and trade would be a massive tax on energy consumption if enacted. The debate will move to the Senate this fall. Here’s what to expect if the Senate passes their own version of Waxman-Markey and President Obama signs cap and trade into law. By 2035:
A look at the states hit hardest by the Waxman-Markey cap-and-trade policies immediately reveals a serious regional divide. The regions worst affected? About half the country. Testifying before a hearing of the Congressional Western Caucus, The Heritage Foundation’s Senior Policy Analyst Ben Lieberman elaborated: The disproportionate burden affects the West. Coal mining will be very hard hit, so Montana and Wyoming and other coal producing states will see this important sector of their economies shrink significantly. Western oil and natural gas producers will face higher costs as well. The promise …
The keys to stimulating our economy are private capital, small business innovation, reducing the burden big government imposes on the economy, and job creation. Several months ago, before the Democrats’ cap and trade bill was railroaded though Congress and before we faced their newly announced health care bill, we, along with 46 of our colleagues, introduced H.R. 1431, the No Cost Stimulus Act of 2009. The No Cost Stimulus Act would significantly increase the production of more American-made energy, which, in turn will create close to two million jobs and …
As of late, when it comes to policymaking in Washington D.C., the trendy thing to do has been to point to Europe. Our Members of Congress are doing it with two of the largest reform policies currently on the table: health care and energy. With regards to energy, advocates of a cap and trade program to reduce carbon dioxide emissions say if Europe can do it, so can we. But the reality is, we’re lucky Europe’s gone through with a cap and trade program, because it is a perfect example …
The Senate Environment and Public Works Committee began their hearings on the 1,500 page Waxman-Markey cap-and-trade legislation Tuesday, and ranking member Senator James Inhofe (R-OK) won a startling admission from Environmental Protection Agency administrator Lisa Jackson. Inhofe produced an EPA chart generated last year during the Senate’s debate of the Lieberman-Warner cap-and-trade legislation. The chart showed that the carbon reductions under that bill would not materially effect global carbon concentrations in the atmosphere. Inhofe then asked Jackson if she agreed with the chart’s conclusions. Jackson replied: “I believe that essential parts …
With the Waxman-Markey cap-and-trade bill passing the House on June 26th, we turn our attention to the Senate side of the debate. And it’s already starting: Cabinet officials pressed President Barack Obama’s case for climate-change and clean-energy legislation at a Senate hearing on Tuesday as lawmakers clashed over whether a ‘cap-and-trade’ system for cutting greenhouse gases would help the U.S. economy or hurt it. ‘Denial of the climate-change problem will not change our destiny; a comprehensive energy and climate bill that caps and then reduces carbon emissions will,’ said Energy …
There’s a point at which you’ve got to ask yourself, what are we doing here? What’s the point?” That’s Elaine Kamarck, a former Clinton administration official and advisor to at that time Vice President Gore, and she’s talking about the Waxman-Markey cap and trade bill. In order to garner enough votes to pass the House of Representatives, policymakers made promises that have groups like Greenpeace questioning the environmental effectiveness of the bill. One of the most contentious provisions in the bill is the use of offsets to reduce carbon dioxide …
After the Waxman-Markey cap and trade bill narrowly passed the House of Representatives (219-212), Nobel Laureate economist Paul Krugman, an avid supporter of global warming legislation, expressed his discontent. His concern was not with the bill but those who voted against it. In his New York Times column Krugman says, “And as I watched the deniers make their arguments, I couldn’t help thinking that I was watching a form of treason — treason against the planet.” Another economist, Don Boudreaux, who is the Chairman of the Department of Economics at …
From today’s Washington Times: When House Democratic leaders were rounding up votes Friday for the massive climate-change bill, they paid special attention to their colleagues from Ohio who remained stubbornly undecided. They finally secured the vote of one Ohioan, veteran Democratic Rep. Marcy Kaptur of Toledo, the old-fashioned way. They gave her what she wanted – a new federal power authority, similar to Washington state’s Bonneville Power Administration, stocked with up to $3.5 billion in taxpayer money available for lending to renewable energy and economic development projects in Ohio and …
