Kerry-Lieberman Climate Bill Would Destroy Millions of Jobs, Cost Familes Thousands
President Obama has repeatedly told Americans he has three main policy priorities — rewriting health care, overhauling the financial system, and imposing a cap-and-trade system to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. He met his first goal and he’s closer than ever on the second; time is running out if he wants to meet the trifecta by the end of 2010. But make no mistake, the president and his allies in Congress are working hard to pass cap-and-trade before this year is up. The problem is that cap-and-trade bills are expensive, they inevitably cost jobs, and the American people know it.
Last year, the House passed the Waxman-Markey cap-and-trade bill. But now that 1400+ page bill is stalled in the Senate in large part because of its massive costs to Americans. To jump start the debate, Senators Kerry and Lieberman recently announced a new strategy to impose a cap-and-trade system on Americans — the inaptly named “American Power Act.” Senator Kerry no longer calls his various proposals “cap-and-trade,” but changing a bill’s name to disguise its intentions is a time-honored ruse in Washington.
To examine the economic impact of this plan, we performed an economic and distributional analysis of the cap-and-trade portion of the proposal. The following are some of the study’s key findings:
- The American Power Act would reduce U.S. employment by roughly 522,000 jobs in 2015, a number that rises to over 5.1 million jobs lost by 2050.
- Households would face a gross annual burden of $125.9 billion per year, or $1,042 per household, with costs disproportionately borne by low-income households.
- On a net basis, the top income quintile will benefit financially, redistributing to these households roughly $12.3 billion per year from the bottom 80 percent of earners.
- Households over age 75 bear the largest burden at 2.3 percent of income, followed by households aged 65-74 and under age 25 at 2.1 percent. By contrast, the nation’s highest-earning households between age 45 and 54 years would bear the smallest percentage burden of just 1.5 percent.
- Contrary to the legislation’s stated goal of reducing price volatility by excluding petroleum refiners from quarterly auctions, the Kerry-Lieberman bill is likely to significantly increase allowance price volatility from quarter to quarter, compared to an ordinary auction in which all covered industries bid for allowances.
“The numbers speak for themselves.” That’s nice.
It’s just too bad that either nobody’s listening or too few people understand what they’re saying.
Wake up Call to Citizens:
Thank you for your article. Once again a thoughtful analysis showing the real world travesty of Obama’s liberal ideology. Time and again people sit down and try to rationalize the idiotic policies of this man, his administration, and the liberal leftists running congress. We show the massive spending on things that are rediculous. We demonstrate how the policies not only do not work but actually destroy the economy and people’s lives. We show that the debt undertaken to pay for these crap programs impoverishes future generations and ruins the lives of millions. Yet these radicals persist in ramming this crap down our throats. Speaking of boots on our neck! When was the last time that citizens felt this threatened by their government? Every time we turn around they are pursuing cap and trade, they want to drive fuel prices up and destroy the coal industry,, they want gas to be $10 a gallon, they want wind power and solar power and biofuel power but can’t make the numbers work. They want higher taxes on people because people feel good to pay higher taxes knowing how well the government spends their money. Now the government wants to dictate health care, they want to dictate what we eat, where we live, what light bulbs we have in our homes. To ensure their power well into the future they are cooking the census, and plotting to legalize illegals. They want to create one crisis after another, ignore the millions who suffer their incompetence like the Gulf oil spill, while they plot and plot to bring another exploitive policy into being. I have had enough of this. I say from this day forward we SUPPORT nothing that this congress does. Have them take a vacation until November. The last thing we need is a boodoggled bill, loaded with pork, and earmarks and money for the SEIU which raises our taxes and attempts to once again deny us our basic freedoms. This president and his cronies need to have our boots on their throat for a change. Passive but firm resistence from now on. Just say NO to Obama!!!
Tommy Gunn:
Great exhibit of frustration. How do you propose to turn back and reverse the communist takeover of the United States of America?
Do you think Bill O’Reilly at the Fox News Channel will select a Presidential Candidate for us who will take back the country in 2012? Do you think the selectee will be from out of the scum pond in Washington D.C. or possibly a real American believer in a Constitutional Republic such as Dr. Victor Davis Hanson?
Do you think O’Reilly is really looking out for you or do you believe as I do that O’Reilly is looking out for the bank account of O’Reilly?
Does not a single non-politician patriotic American reside in the United States who would be an alternative to the feckless John McCain type candidates we have been ALLOWED to vote for the past 30 years?
Who next time, Hillary vs. Jeb Bush?
Stand by Mr. Gunn, you ain’t seen nothin’ yet.
“American Power Act.” more people need to hear about this..no white wash, just the facts. It would scare the socks off of them.
Is there no way to reverse the things these people have done to us?
Kerry and Lieberman have been in Washington too long. I sent Lieberman an email voicing my opinion..I’m sure he’ll change his mind and not work with Kerry..:):
…Kerry in particular brings havoc to the American way of life.( His wife is an absolute joke and I found her insulting. Money does not make her human.)
Ann Coulter should pick our next president!!!
wow…can you just hear the vetting process on that one… =]:)!
Boycott Heinz food products = defund the Kerry’s.
People need to realize this cap-n-trade hoax is in no way concerned with energy conservation, but it is about setting up a ONE WORLD GOVERNMENT Control of energy and other vital resources, what Americans should be concerned about is giving up our rights, to a world body that has contempt for America, and will do anything they can to screw us simply because the United States is successful. The majority of the rest of the world is a loosing cause wrapped in Communism and Socialism. And if bills like this pass we will be the leading socialist country in the world
Got it in one.
Tom Tom has it correct. These three ‘priorities’, the ‘right’ to health care, Cap and Trade and financial allocation of wealth have one thing in common central or governmental control. Removing individual choice from the equation to the extent possible at first and increasing over time.
Kerry and Lieberman are strong advocates for socialized government. And more and more we see “representatives” in politics convinced of the idea that government must control everything service related. Leaving Americans to be the ‘consumers’ (of those services) that the design of a ‘consumer/service’ economy was intended to produce.
You don’t think that sending all of our jobs overseas was an accident, do you? Most of it was the direct result of government legislation in order to ‘level the playing field’ for other nations. Now we are seeing what that term means real time as government takes over the last of the ‘industries’ that promote individual freedom.
The days of ‘you decide’ without consideration to government intervention are about to vanish before your very eyes. As your government has declared war on individual liberty.
Ruler4You:
News flash. The war is over. The American People lost. Those who follow us will reap the whirlwind.
It is dishonest to project anything to the year 2050…let alone 2015. There is no manner to reasonably or with any degree of confidence project what will occur in 40 years. This is part of the problem infecting Politics today, people that truly believe they know what will happen tomorrow, let alone 40 years from now.
Multiply any numbers the EPA comes up with as projected cost by ten and it might be close.
I hope that Pajamas Media will consider re-runing the articles about what cap and trade and the whole green jobs myth has done to Spain every time they post an article like this. We need to ram the point home that this is a nation buster.
From the same people who have given us the auto clunker program, the oil spill clean up. and health reform we don’t have to time to go into. Oh, and a foreign policy the total reverse of anything approaching normalcy.
Now we shall see what happens when you give the unhinged power and the support of an ignorant media, a media that hates America almost as much as Obama does,
It may come at a cost but it will be important
what may come at a necessary cost?
Do people who say, “it may come at a cost, but it will be important” ever actually pay for anything? Nah, they’re the same people who don’t pay taxes, but always end up getting “tax credits.” What a scam of a system!
RICH AMERICANS LIKE LIEBERMAN AND KERRY HAVE NO CARE ABOUT THE HARDSHIPS ON THE AVERAGE AMERICAN. THEIR GOVERNMENT IS BUSY PUTTING THE HARD WORKING FARMERS OF AMERICA OUT OF BUSINESS SO THAT THEY CAN FUNNEL THE MONEY FROM THEIR RICH YUPPIE BASE IN THE AMERICANIZED CITIES.
Humorous cartoon on this topic at http://drawfortruth.wordpress.com/2010/05/13/keeping-one-promise/
Only a fool would think switching to a “clean” economy, focusing on wind and solar while cutting back on fossil fuels would lead to a gain in jobs versus the loss in mining drilling and all the attendant jobs that go with fossil fuels. A bigger fool is one who thinks carbon credits will lead to cleaner air. It’s a scam to increase the wealth of the perpetrators of the scam under the cover of “social justice”. I say, screw the rest of the world! If they want to live under systems consigning them to perpetual poverty, it’s their problem. Bringing America down to their level does no one any good. America needs to be an example, a beacon if you will, to all those who want to change their own countries for the better. Despite their mocking and insults of America why then, does most of the world’s population want to go there? It’s like this, does the family on welfare down the block aspire to be like the other welfare families in the neighbourhood? Of course not. They want to be better. The same applies to countries. Without America as an example the world will be a sorry place.
For those conservatives who were drooling over Joe (the hand wringer) Lieberman (including Hannity) -have you awoken yet?
Kerry, Lieberman, and Obama refuse to accept science – that the Anthropogenic Global Warming (AGW) theory was a scam, there is no human caused global warming. This theory was revealed as a scam last fall. So their bill is ridiculous, based on false views about climate change.
As usual another environment-hating article appears in PJMedia. Why do Republicans hate Gaia?
Why do you think, Crusader, that everything done in the name of protecting the earth is true? You really ought to stop drinking the Kool-Aid. The whole purpose of the movement is power and vast riches to those at the top. You, on the other hand, are probably just cannon fodder. The laudable goals of recycling and an orderly, privately driven, quest for new and better sources of energy and a myriad of reasonable steps to make our environment better have been co-opted by those who really don’t have your welfare in mind.
Of course Cap & Trade is a HOAX. The science is jerry-rigged (proven) FRAUD. Tom Tom, you are right, it’s all about the ONE WORLD ORDER, and the elite getting rich. Glenn Beck has been exposing the sordid nest of guilty parties, including BHO, and of course the King evil-doer, George Soros.
What chaps my ass is I NEVER hear anyone saying ANYTHING about the ADDITIONAL COSTS from all of the companies who will be using the “necessarily skyrocket(ed)” higher energy costs, and who will be PASSING THOSE COSTS onto US, the consumers. NOT ONE WORD FROM OBAMA, of course not. But also, NO ONE on FOX thinks it’s worth mentioning. I don’t get it. No amount of screaming has had any effect. I find it APPALLING.
Now take the Gulf Oil Disaster. Obama has carefully engineered the horrible accident into a MAJOR Coast-Killing CRISIS. He deliberately stalled, doing nothing but hinder clean-up efforts by refusing foreign assistance, blaming it on the Jones Act. Give me a break! He thinks he’s so clever, that nobody can see though his calculated actions. THAT is the only thing that is TRANSPARENT about the marxist. But to the point . . . gas prices are going to skyrocket as a result of this terrible oil spill, and the 6 months moratorium will nail the door shut on any future drilling. The oil rigs are going south to Venezuela never to return, along with Obama dollars ($2-$10 Billion) to PETROBRAS. Aug. 15 Billionaire investor George Soros bought an $811 million stake in Petroleo Brasileiro SA in the second quarter, making the Brazilian state-controlled oil company his investment fund’s largest holding. As of June 30, the stake in Petrobras, as the Rio de Janeiro-based oil producer is known, made up 22 percent of the $3.68 billion of stocks and American depositary receipts held by Soros Fund Management LLC, according to a filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. So how much do you think OUR GAS prices are going to go up? SKYROCKET? Add the V.A.T. tax!
Cap & Trade, the soaring Gasoline prices to come, the V.A.T. on top of all that . . . how much do you think all those things together are going to cause the prices of goods and services to rise to the consuming public? MORE THAN WE CAN AFFORD! And notice, I didn’t even address what the higher prices of energy, gas, and V.A.T. will be.
The progressive democrats couldn’t give a rat’s butt how it will impact the American Public. They are so drunk on power and giddy at the anticipation of finally getting all their socialist/communist programs that they can’t see it’s going to destroy our beloved Country.
HAPPY 4TH OF JULY, IT MAY BE OUR LAST.
I would say, Jim, that they can see it. Destroying our beloved country is a feature, not a bug. It’s not fair that we do better than other countries. We need to, you know, spread the wealth.
This will cost jobs and wreck the economy? Umm, yes. That’s a feature, not a bug.
From what I’ve read on this site it is exactly what is happening in Australia, we have a socialist (commie’) govt’ in power here and they’re hell bent on ruining our country in the same way they’re going about it in the US. This great big tax they’re planning to “save” the planet is the biggest piece of crap that has ever been shoved down our throats. What I can’t understand is why the media isn’t agains’t this scam. I’m afraid you’re right Tom Tom, that it is all about a one world government,it seems that there is big heaps of money to be made by the already wealthy and powerful. I can see both our countries changing for the worse unless the people rise up and say enough’s enough!
Hi Great informational Blog!
I have been working in Bio Fuels in Africa since 2008 I am posting to warn people about “Dr” Peter McHendry who has taken over R3,000,000 from investors into his Global BioDiesel, Omnium investment Trust, Akula Trading 227 PTY compaines.
He is also responsible for a Voulenteer Scam “Great Earth Safari” and Christian Ski – He ran away from America after his property there was forclosed
full details including contact numbers for the Police in South Africa can be found here;
http://www.petermchendryisafraudster.blogspot.com
We cannot let the BioFuel Industry get tarnished by people like “Dr” Peter Mc Hendry