The American Clean Energy and Security Act (“Cap and Trade”) Lie
by Aaron Turpen, RestoretheRepublic.com
On Friday afternoon, the United States House of Representatives passed the “Cap and Trade” bill, formally titled the “American Clean Energy and Security Act.” This bill has been touted as the legislation that will save American jobs from the failing economy, save the planet from destruction by greenhouse gases, and lead America into the 21st century of the new global economy.
According to its supporters, the ACES is not just a piece of legislation, it’s Superman on paper.
Of course, the fighting over the bill during debates in the House were largely portrayed as being along partisan lines. This is true on the surface and the bill passed by a slim margin of only 7 votes. Those seven votes, however, were not “Republican defectors” (there were 8 of those), since the Democrats own a much larger majority than that in the Congress.
Instead, the split was between two basic camps in D.C.: those who know that their benefactors will profit by the bill and those who know that theirs will lose because of the bill. Sadly, this is how every bill in Washington is passed. Rarely does the Voice of the People make a real change in government.
This reasoning for ACES’ passage is spelled out quite plainly in one major debating factor against the bill itself: how it will impact farms. Majority Leader Pelosi struck a deal with the Agriculture Committee, amending the bill to include special treatment for the darling of the Midwest: ethanol. The addition of new farm subsidies in the form of “carbon offset credits” that the farms can sell sweetened the deal.
Others who lobbied for and against the bill came from somewhat surprising corners of the ring. According to the Wall Street Journal, the Edison Electric Institute backed the bill while the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the National Association of Manufacturers worked against it. Not surprising, given just slight consideration into the businesses these lobbies represent: utilities, alt-energy companies and small business, airlines, and manufacturing respectively.
The 1,200 page ACES will have its hands in nearly every aspect of the U.S. economy: from energy to the housing market to foreign trade. Fittingly, as with all government programs, it will benefit the bureaucrats in the federal government the most. According to Rep. John Boehner, the House Minority Leader, the bill will work by sending bureaucracy through every office in government, as explained in his graph below.
Proponents of the bill used both Congressional Budget Office and Environmental Protection Agency numbers and information to back the bill’s legitimacy and “limited impact” on the economy. Focus was mainly on the “average American family,” which we all know every Congressman is intimately familiar with.
The CBO’s projections say that the bill will cost only $175 per household in 2020, but ignored both employment and gross national product in that assessment. The dismal track record of the CBO in predicting economic impacts has been a matter of record for decades. The height of this, up to this point, was the CBO’s complete failure to even come close in it’s 2007-2012 predictions.
In fact, even using the CBO’s numbers, a chart from Rep. Waxman’s committee shows that the impacts will not be low. The chart, below, shows the economic impact of the bill on American households up to year 2012. Even using the undoubtedly wrong CBO numbers, it’s possible to see that most of the country will be in the red over this bill. Texas gets hit the hardest while decidedly Democrat-leaning states will see profits.
These numbers themselves, if accepted, are still dubious. California, for instance, has a high percentage of its energy made from “renewable” sources. That is misleading, however, since the majority of that “green energy” is actually imported from other states. My own, Wyoming, included.
One thing that the bill’s proponents gloss over and don’t take into account is the question of who really pays for this. While they are quick to point out that it won’t cost individual Americans much (directly), they fail to address the question of how the costs to business and corporations will be absorbed. This, of course, will be done by passing it on to consumers in some fashion—which means the American people.
Finally, the bill’s proponents completely ignore the fact that the bill puts a total “cap” on industry’s ability to send specific gases (collectively called “greenhouse gases”) into the atmosphere. This cap means that there is a finite amount that can be produced. So industry will have to do one of three things: produce up to the emissions cutoff point and stop, purchase higher amounts of the limited pollution commodity allowances, or go out of business.
The first and the last of these options means the business closes down, all or in part, which means lost jobs. The middle option means incurring potentially huge costs at the expense of profits, which will be either passed on to consumers or absorbed—either of which lessens the value of the company.
A third option is within the “cap” itself, which applies only to factories that emit a specific amount of these greenhouse gases (or higher). By building smaller, less efficient, but lower-polluting (per factory, due to size) facilities, the businesses can get around the cap-and-trade altogether. Which means no pollutants were “limited” by the bill in the first place.
In the short term–for at least the next four years–the impacts will be minimally felt. This is due to the provisions of the bill designed to give away “freebies” to those industries which will be most heavily hit by the legislation. For the first few years, the “certificates” for pollution allowance will be given away for free by the EPA. They won’t have a price tag for a few years yet…
No matter the options chosen by business or the way that the system works (or fails to work), the real losers in all of this are everyday Americans. Through lost jobs, an even more heavily impacted economy, and with fewer entrepreneurial options open to them, all Americans will be worse off.
Tags: cap and trade, carbon tax, elites, government, new world order, nwo, President Obama, united states
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