Cap-and-Trade meets pork-barrel spending

[WhiskeyGirl]

The legislation has little to do with developing America's vast domestic energy supply. It's cap-and-trade meets pork-barrel spending. It's about regulations, restrictions and research. It does not deal with exploiting America's vast energy reserves but with finding ways to mitigate their alleged harmful effect.

To that end, the bill creates some 60 new agencies and projects to eat up our tax dollars and buy support (see list alongside).

According to a leaked draft summary, there is "$7 billion annually to improve our transportation infrastructure and efficiency" to be paid for by a gas tax that is not called a tax but a "linked fee." There is "$2 billion per year for researching and developing effective carbon capture and sequestration methods and devices." There is even "a new multibillion-dollar revenue stream for agriculture through a domestic offset program." Tilling the soil releases carbon dioxide, don't you know?

Ironically, the draft summary acknowledges the bill will cause energy prices to necessarily skyrocket by promising to "provide assistance to those Americans who may be disproportionately affected by potential increases in energy prices." How about lowering prices and creating jobs by increasing domestic supply?

"This bill is a compilation of just about every bad idea that has emerged in the energy debate," said Patrick Creighton, spokesman for the Institute for Energy Research, a free-market think tank. "Two things are certain if this bill becomes law: Energy prices will skyrocket, and jobs will be shipped overseas."

It is a scam built upon a scam, introduced just as the mercury in Chicopee, Mass., dropped to 26 degrees at about 5 a.m., beating the previous record for the chilliest May 11 set back in 1962.

In testimony before Congress on May 6, Britain's Lord Christopher Monckton, a global warming expert, noted that "neither global mean surface temperature nor its rates of change in recent decades have been exceptional, unusual, inexplicable or unprecedented."

Monckton also advised: "There are many urgent priorities that need the attention of Congress, and it is not for me as an invited guest in your country to say what they are. Yet I can say this much: on any view, 'global warming' is not one of them."

We agree. Jobs, energy development and economic growth come first.

more here - http://www.investors.com/NewsAndAnalysis/Article.aspx?id=533800

[WhiskeyGirl]

Kerry-Lieberman Climate Bill is a Hidden Tax on Transportation, ATA Says
 
ARLINGTON, Va., May 12 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- The American Trucking Associations (ATA) cannot support the American Power Act, the climate change bill introduced May 12 by Sen. John Kerry and Sen. Joe Lieberman, ATA President and CEO Bill Graves said today.

The bill will raise the cost of gasoline and diesel fuel without significantly reducing the output of carbon dioxide by the trucking industry, which is a non-discretionary user of diesel fuel.

The Senate bill would require refiners to purchase billions of dollars worth of carbon allowances that correspond to the carbon footprint of the fuels they sell.  The refiners will then pass this cost on to consumers in the form of higher fuel prices.  As such, the Senate bill operates as a hidden multi-billion-dollar tax.

"While others might object to our characterization, the climate bill clearly imposes a tax on transportation fuels and reallocates revenue from that tax for non-transportation purposes," Graves said.  Only a small portion of the tax would go to the Highway Trust Fund for much-needed improvements and repairs to our nation's highway infrastructure.

more here - http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/kerry-lieberman-climate-bill-is-a-hidden-tax-on-transportation-ata-says-93625034.html