From NetRight Nation Blog:
Cap-and-Tax Is A Wealth Transfer Program
Written by Rep. Joe Pitts (PA) |
Friday, 24 April 2009 19:05 |
This week, the House Energy and Commerce Committee began consideration of a cap and trade plan that would regulate greenhouse gas emissions. As a member of the Committee, I have serious concerns about the plan we are considering, including the fact that we still don’t have actual bill text that we can use to analyze the true cost of the bill. I believe we should be good stewards of this earth and its resources, but especially in the midst of a recession, this plan will amount to a massive new energy tax on American families that we cannot afford. Everything from making dinner in your oven, to heating the water for your morning shower, to commuting to your job each day, will all become more expensive overnight with this cap-and-tax plan. And President Obama intends to use the money from the tax to spend not on advancing a clean energy economy, but on instituting universal healthcare. Instead of creating the biggest of big government programs to transfer trillions of dollars of money from energy consumers to the federal government, we ought to be allowing the market to bring forward successful, clean alternative energy technologies. My Democrat colleagues aren’t even serious enough about reducing greenhouse gases to consider nuclear power a reliable, clean option for energy generation. We should be moving forward with all of the practical solutions to cut greenhouse gas emissions, including nuclear energy and waste-to-energy, a proven clean technology that has been successful in my district for decades. We can reduce greenhouse gases and increase this nation’s energy security, but we can’t get there by relying solely on wind and solar power. We need to use wind and solar in conjunction with nuclear, hydro, biomass, waste-to-energy and others. Though we obviously don’t have a complete bill to analyze, legislation (the Warner-Lieberman bill) in the last Congress that attempted to regulate greenhouse gases would have resulted in aggregate real GDP losses of nearly $5 trillion and 900,000 jobs lost in the first 20 years after enactment. And the Waxman-Markey draft is even more sweeping than the Warner-Lieberman plan. Plainly, the economic consequences will be worse. We can’t tax our way to a successful new energy economy. We need to move forward with a clean energy plan that helps, not hurts our economy. Rep. Joe Pitts is a contributor to NetRight Nation.] End of article. |
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