The Wall Street Journals said it best! The proposal to put a cap on emissions on facilities (and eventually cars and homes) emitting carbon-based pollutants, such as carbon dioxide, and charge those exceeding their limits, or cap, a hefty tax is really a tax on working families. Here are excerpts from the Journal's editorial today:
Cap and trade is the tax that dare not speak its name, and Democrats are hoping in particular that no one notices who would pay for their climate ambitions. With President Obama depending on vast new carbon revenues in his budget and Congress promising a bill by May, perhaps Americans would like to know the deeply unequal ways that climate costs would be distributed across regions and income groups.
Politicians love cap and trade because they can claim to be taxing "polluters," not workers. Hardly. Once the government creates a scarce new commodity -- in this case the right to emit carbon -- and then mandates that businesses buy it, the costs would inevitably be passed on to all consumers in the form of higher prices.
Hit hardest would be the "95% of working families" Mr. Obama keeps mentioning, usually omitting that his no-new-taxes pledge comes with the caveat "unless you use energy." Putting a price on carbon is regressive by definition because poor and middle-income households spend more of their paychecks on things like gas to drive to work, groceries or home heating.
Cap and trade, in other words, is a scheme to redistribute income and wealth -- but in a very curious way. It takes from the working class and gives to the affluent; takes from Miami, Ohio, and gives to Miami, Florida; and takes from an industrial America that is already struggling and gives to rich Silicon Valley and Wall Street "green tech" investors who know how to leverage the political class."
Hopefully, Gov. Gregoire and Washington legislators will take a close look at what "cap and trade" will do to our economy, our families and our competitiveness. Do not rush to join President Obama on this costly adventure. These are very serious issues and they impact people and jobs. We need to give them careful thought and analysis.
You'd think that a President from the Midwest would look carefully at what his proposals are doing to American competitiveness, especially in our industrial heartland which is his home turf. Does President Obama really believe that our competitors in China and India are going to stop generating electricity from coal because America says so?
When will this insanity stop? There are better ways to reduce pollution and develop the state-of the-art emission control technology the world needs. We can develop a vast new green industry which will keep our families working. Collect the taxes off that, Mr. President!
Don C. Brunell, President (DonB@awb.org)
