Washington D.C. Is the only place I know where bad ideas take on a life of their own. Instead of being refuted, they walk the halls like zombies waiting for their next chance win a vote or two.
One of them is cap and trade which —if it wasn’t for some questionable healthcare ideas—would be at the top of the Congressional wish list.
Beacause after all, saving the planet is all the rage these days. And the truth is it’s even better for the fine folks in D.C. if they grab a few bucks for themselves along the way.
The bad news,however, is all that money has to come from somewhere.
That’s where you come in….
From CBS News by Declan McCullagh entitled: Obama Admin: Cap And Trade Could Cost Families $1,761 A Year
“The Obama administration has privately concluded that a cap and trade law would cost American taxpayers up to $200 billion a year, the equivalent of hiking personal income taxes by about 15 percent.
A previously unreleased analysis prepared by the U.S. Department of Treasury says the total in new taxes would be between $100 billion to $200 billion a year. At the upper end of the administration’s estimate, the cost per American household would be an extra $1,761 a year.
A second memorandum, which was prepared for Obama’s transition team after the November election, says this about climate change policies: “Economic costs will likely be on the order of 1 percent of GDP, making them equal in scale to all existing environmental regulation.”
The FOIA’d document written by Judson Jaffe, who joined the Treasury Department’s Office of Environment and Energy in January 2009, says: “Given the administration’s proposal to auction all emission allowances, a cap-and-trade program could generate federal receipts on the order of $100 to $200 billion annually.” (Obviously, any final cap-and-trade system may be different from what Obama had proposed, and could yield higher or lower taxes.)
Because personal income tax revenues bring in around $1.37 trillion a year, a $200 billion additional tax would be the equivalent of a 15 percent increase a year. A $100 billion additional tax would represent a 7 or 8 percent increase a year.
One odd point: The document written by Jaffee includes this line: “It will raise energy prices and impose annual costs on the order of XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX.” The Treasury Department redacted the rest of the sentence with a thick black line.”
The documents (PDF) were obtained under the Freedom of Information Act by the free-market Competitive Enterprise Institute and released on Tuesday.
Yeah sure, higher energy costs, that’s the ticket.
And they wonder why people are so angry these days.
Related Articles:
Cap and Trade = Cripple and Rob
Cashing in on Cap and Trade: A Nuclear Power Surge
Cap and Trade: The Latest Money Grab
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