Examiner Editorial: The Obama-Waxman-Markey energy crisis
June 25, 2009
House Democrats expect to gain passage Friday of the Waxman-Markey version of President Barack Obama’s “cap-and-trade” anti-global warming energy bill. When the latest version of the bill text was released Tuesday, it ran to more than 1,200 pages. But when House members cast their votes Friday, the text will be even longer, thanks to the compromise reached Wednesday to gain support from House Agriculture Committee Chairman Rep. Collin Peterson, D-Minn., and other farm-state Democrats. Regardless of the bill’s length, however, it’s highly unlikely that more than a handful of members will have actually read the bill before they vote.
It’s such eyes-wide-shut voting by Congress that allows such monstrosities as this to become law. Crafted with the blessing of the Obama White House by House Energy and Commerce Committee Chairman Rep. Henry Waxman, D-Los Angeles, and Rep. Edward Markey, D-Mass., who chairs that panel’s key subcommittee, the bill will sock it to every American who drives a car, has a monthly utility bill or buys essentials like food and clothing. Experts estimate the annual costs will approach $3,000 for every family within a few years. In return for this wallop to Middle America’s wallet, there will be virtually no change in the amount of greenhouse gases emitted into the atmosphere, the reduction of which is supposed to be the bill’s main purpose.
Under the bill’s cap-and-trade system, federal officials will cap the total amount of greenhouse gases that can be emitted annually, on a schedule that requires a 3 percent cut by 2012, 17 percent by 2020 and 83 percent by 2050. Officials will also issue “credits” to be bought by businesses that satisfy the caps and can then resell them to businesses that fail to do so. The government will collect nearly a trillion dollars in new revenue via an energy tax on those credits.
But since 85 percent of the energy consumed by Americans is now and will inevitably continue for at least two decades to be produced using fossil fuels — the heaviest generators of greenhouse gases — the caps will force energy rationing on America for the first time since World War II. An econometric study by The Heritage Foundation’s Center for Data Analysis projects that the Obama-Waxman-Markey will cause nearly $10 trillion in economic losses by 2035, including an estimated 1,145,000 jobs and a 57 percent plunge in farm profits. But not everybody will be losers. Politicians in Congress will have more tax dollars to spend and there will be thousands of new jobs for Washington, D.C., bureaucrats.
