$7 Trillion in New Taxes

This is just a preview of what's to come.

Lieberman-Warner’s Window Dressing Reveals Largest Pork Bill in U.S. History

“The latest version is nothing more than window dressing for a bill that has been exposed by numerous government and private analyses as costly and damaging to America,” Senator Inhofe said. “Lieberman-Warner will redistribute over $5.6 trillion from American consumers to pet congressional projects. Despite paying for the trillions of dollars mandated by this cap-and-trade scheme, American families and workers will only receive back $800 billion in consumer tax relief -- $7 paid for every $1 returned.

“The fact is that the Lieberman-Warner bill is the largest pork bill ever considered by Congress. No matter how many revisions this bill undergoes, it remains a massive redistribution of wealth, the largest new tax and spend program in our Nation's history. The handouts being offered by the sponsors of this bill come straight from the pocket of families and workers in the form of higher gas, power, and heating bills. The newly revised Lieberman-Warner bill offers nothing new except more pain at the gas pump and more expensive consumer goods.”

Inhofe has an op-ed in the WSJ today. Both Texas Senators voted for this. Yeah for me. Cornyn is up for re-election this year. Sadly, he's not my Senator. But, I also would still vote for him because he generally does a very good job. Kay Bailey I can't really say any more. She's pro-amnesty even when her constituents continue to rail that she shouldn't be. And while she did vote against the McCain-Kennedy Amnesty a year ago, she voted for the farm bill that was backdoor amnesty for illegal immigrant farm workers.

From the National Review:

Beneath all its painfully precise social engineering lies one objective — to force Americans to change their way of life so dramatically over the next few decades that global temperatures will fall. How? Through an unforgiving cap on greenhouse-gas emissions. Specifically, carbon-dioxide emissions must be 19-percent below the 2005 U.S. level by 2020, and 71 percent lower by 2050. The only way to meet these goals is to drive up energy costs — and federal revenues — significantly. This is essentially a massive new energy tax, calculated by the Congressional Budget Office to increase federal revenues by $1.2 trillion in the first 7 years.

And what environmental benefit can we expect from all this? According to one oft-cited analysis, if all the world’s industrial nations were to comply fully with the similarly ambitious goal in the Kyoto Treaty, the world’s climate would be all of 0.07 degrees Celsius cooler. “Such a miniscule change in global temperatures,” the Competitive Enterprise Institute’s Marlo Lewis notes, “would be too small to detect.”

Great. As if I don't have anything else to worry about. My own government is going to raise energy prices on me, in an effort to force me to change my current habits. Which, I would imagine, if investigated, I'm not the problem.

But a recent analysis of the Lieberman-Warner bill by my colleagues at the Heritage Foundation concludes that its economic consequences will be dire. In the manufacturing sector nearly 3 million blue-collar jobs would disappear. Incomes would fall, fuel prices would skyrocket, and carbon tariffs on goods imported from countries that do not meet the bill’s rigorous standards would add to the cost of imported clothes, consumer electronics, and automobiles.

Americans are expected to bear all these economic costs, remember, in exchange for an imperceptible change in global temperatures four decades hence. As constituents begin to appreciate these costs, the prospects for cap-and-trade bills should diminish.

While I am all about new forms of energy, I don't think taxing the crap out of Americans is the way to expand our energy horizons. And the jobs that they mention disappearing, well Senator Boxer has already thought of that. In the form of subsidies for her pet groups. Total amount of subsidies: $5.575 Trillion dollars.

The subsidies weigh in at a cool $5.575 trillion (yes, trillion with a “t”) over the next four decades. A very partial list of this cornucopia of new Washington largesse includes:

• $800 billion for consumers “in need of assistance related to energy costs.”
• $911 billion for electric companies “to ensure that consumers are protected from increases in energy costs.”
• $566 billion for State governments for everything from reducing the bill’s impact on low-income consumers (hey, didn’t we do that already?) to encouraging recycling.
• $213 billion for carbon-intensive manufacturers in the iron, steel, pulp, paper, cement, rubber, chemicals, glass, ceramics, sulfur hexafluoride and aluminum industries.
• $307 billion for utilities that use fossil fuels.
• $237 billion to help “wildlife” adapt to global warming.
• $190 billion for a job-training program for all those who lose their jobs under this bill.
• $342 billion for a global-warming foreign-aid program — euphemistically described as “international partnerships to adapt to global warming.”

Does this really make sense? For a drop in temperature that wont be felt for 4 decades, that will be indetectable? Doesn't that mean that really all this is, is new taxes on Americans? New revenue for Congress? And more money to redistribute to their pet projects and their "impoverished poor."

But Senator Boxer thinks now is the perfect time to raise taxes, you know since the economy is so soft and all. And people are struggling with gas and food prices.

The Lieberman-Warner global warming bill would have many consequences, but “hope” is not among them. The Cleveland Plain Dealer editorialized on June 1, that the bill "will just bore new holes into an already battered economy." American workers, already suffering from a weakening economy, skyrocketing home energy, and gas prices would face more economic pain under the bill. With average gas prices across the country approaching or at $4 a gallon, the Senate’s global warming “de-stimulus” bill will further drive up the cost at the pump.

Despite these economic woes, Senator Boxer claimed that now is the “precise time” to pass a bill that will raise energy prices. “Why do this [the Lieberman-Warner bill] now? We’re in a recession. Precisely because we’re in a recession is why we should be doing this. This bill is the first thing that brings us hope,” Senator Boxer said during her opening remarks on the Senate floor today.

I know that it's difficult and not fun to pay attention to what these clowns in Washington are doing. But it's our money they are playing with. And if you don't want this heavy tax burden on your shoulders, we really do need to speak up.

And this is just the beginning. We've already seen heavy rises in pork laden bills. The housing bail out garbage, the farm bill, now this energy bill. As soon as the pedulum swings the other way, and it will, those in power now will have a free ticket to spend as much as they want. Tax as much as they want. They should have a veto proof majority come November 5th.

Oh happy day.

If you'll excuse me, I need to write a letter to Kay Bailey.