The End Of the World Is Near

A Disaster, Getting Worse

http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives2/2008/06/020675.php




We wrote here about the economic disaster that goes by the name Lieberman-Warner, the carbon cap-and-trade system now being considered by the Senate. We posted a diagram created by the Chamber of Commerce that exposed the ludicrous complexity and intrusiveness of the proposal.

The bill, as amended by Barbara Boxer, has now gotten even worse. Boxer's amendment adds more than 300 regulations and mandates. The Chamber has accordingly prepared another version of their chart that reflects Boxer's changes. It is a remarkable document; click to enlarge:

This morning, four Republican Senators held a press conference on Lieberman-Warner. Jim Inhofe of Oklahoma:

[T]his would be the largest single tax increase in the history of the country. This is the -- using their own figures, it would be $6.7 trillion, with a maximum giving back over the life of this bill of $2.5 trillion. That leaves $4.2 trillion dollars.

Kit Bond of Missouri:

According to EPA, under Lieberman-Warner, the average household power bills rise 44 percent by 2030. They lose $4,377 to higher energy prices and pay $1.40 more for gas by 2050.

I, like Senator McConnell, toured my state this past week talking about energy. And you know something?

When I told my Missouri constituents that the Senate this week would not be talking about moving a bill to open up the massive oil and gas supplies that we have in America to lower prices, that this body would be considering a bill to add huge price increases to all energy, they could not believe it.

What is the Senate doing? That's a good question, because these higher U.S. energy prices would drive energy-intensive manufacturing jobs overseas to foreign countries with cheaper energy prices. Manufacturing workers are already suffering.

We've seen half of U.S. fertilizer industry leave the country. Chemical companies and plastic companies are leaving the U.S. Just recently, Dow announced it was thinking of selling its plastic business because firms in Asia and the Middle East have access to cheaper energy.

Adding to this misery, manufacturers estimate this bill will cost my state of Missouri over 76,000 jobs and cut between 3 million and 4 million jobs nationwide by 2030.