More:Forcing auto companies to make more fuel-efficient cars is fine, but Americans overwhelmingly believe it's more important for the country to find new energy sources.
Seventy-five percent (75%) say finding new sources of energy to reduce that dependence will do more to help the environment than requiring automakers to produce more fuel-efficient cars. A new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey found that just 13% hold the opposite view. Younger Americans feel even more strongly abut developing new energy sources than their elders do.
Placing the priority on finding new energy sources is a view shared by men and women, young and old, investor and non-investor, low-income, and high-income, white and non-white. There also is very little partisan divide on this question.
Now that we've established the priorities of the American people, let's look at what the Democrat-controlled federal government is doing. Late last night, Democrats slugged through Obama's cap-and-tax bill. A review and analysis via Gateway Pundit:Sixty-two percent (62%) of Americans believe that finding new sources of energy is more important than reducing the amount of energy Americans now consume. This finding has [been] consistent for months.
Fifty percent (50%) want to see more nuclear power plants in the United States.
Only 22% of Americans are willing to spend more for a hybrid car to help the environment.
"Under my plan of a cap and trade system electricity rates would necessarily skyrocket. Businesses would have to retrofit their operations. That will cost money. They will pass that cost onto consumers."
Senator Barack ObamaBarack Obama admitted last year that cap and trade legislation would cause electricity prices to skyrocket.
Speaking on Cap and Trade
San Francisco Chronicle
January 17, 2008
Cap and trade will likely cost $700 to $1,400 dollars per US family per year...
Democratic Congressman John Dingell (D-MI) summed up cap and trade at a Congressional hearing on April 24th-- "It's a Great Big Tax!"
But, this didn't seem to bother House Democrats last night.
The Democratic members of the Energy and Commerce Committee passed the massive cap and tax bill late last night.
WCBSTV reported, via Free Republic:
Legislation imposing the first nationwide limits on the pollution blamed for global warming advanced in the House late Thursday, clearing a key committee despite strong Republican opposition.The bill was crafted by Green groups including one of Al Gore's environmental groups.
The Energy and Commerce Committee approved the sweeping climate bill 33-25 after repeatedly turning back GOP attempts to kill or weaken the measure during four days of debate.
The panel's action increases the likelihood that the full House for the first time will address broad legislation to tackle climate change later this year. The Senate has yet to take up the issue.
Rep. Henry Waxman, D-Calif., the panel's chairman, said the bill represents "decisive and historic action" to increase America's energy security and deal with global warming. "When this bill is enacted into law, we will break our dependence on foreign oil, make our nation the world leader in clean energy jobs and technology, and cut global-warming pollution," said Waxman.
Reading the account of how this thing passed makes me nauseous (emphasis mine). Read the whole thing...but get ready for a good blood-boil first:
House Democrats used political muscle and party loyalty on Thursday to ram through an anti-global warming bill that opponents caution could cost a family of four $2,937.38 a year.
The action came after a marathon committee session that spent 37 hours over four days methodically rejecting 56 separate Republican efforts to learn the full cost of the bill, to prevent scams in its trading system and even get the feds out of hot tubs. The massive, 946-page Waxman-Markey global warming bill was named for its authors, House Energy and Commerce Committee Chairman Henry Waxman, D-Calif., and U.S. Rep. Ed Markey, D-Mass. It passed the Waxman committee on a vote of 33-25.
"We have legitimate and serious concerns about the redirection of our energy policy in America, which is the foundation and bedrock of our free market economy, the most productive and the largest in the world," said U.S. Rep. Joe Barton of Texas, the committee's ranking Republican. "A third of the world's GDP is based on the United States economy and that economy for over 150 years has been based on a free market allocation of resources in the energy sector. This bill makes fundamental changes in that basic philosophy."
Cost analyses of the bill vary because hard information on it had been scarce, but few disagreed that the legislation will cost working people billions of dollars through devices intended to force people to stop using energy by making it dramatically more expensive.
"One estimate puts its price per family of four at $29,373.85 over 10 years," Barton said. "Another estimate is that it will raise electricity rates 90 percent after adjusting for inflation, and boost gasoline prices 74 percent and natural gas prices 55 percent."
On a macro level, Barton predicted that "a cap-and-trade program will never be made to work in an economy as diverse and complex as the United States. It's just not possible, and trying to make it work is going to cost money and jobs. How many U.S. industries do we want to bankrupt in one markup, just to achieve a temperature impact of less than one degree Fahrenheit in the next 100 years?"
Typical was this exchange when U.S. Rep. Mike Burgess, R-Texas, sought to discover from the committee's Democratic staff how much a homeowner might pay for electricity because of the bill: Burgess – "Can you tell me what the direct effect on a ratepayer in Texas would be, with Texas as a non-regulated state?" Democratic staff counsel – "No, I can't tell you what the direct effect on ratepayers in Texas would be."
In another round of questions and answers, U.S. Rep. Cliff Stearns, R-Florida, queried U.S. Rep. Bart Gordon, D-Tenn., about the bill's proposal to spend "such sums" of taxpayers' money "as may be necessary" to finance the exploration of currently unknown forms of energy: "How much money do you think this is going to take? Based upon your argument that the appropriators can appropriate more money if necessary, is there anybody in this room who knows how much we're talking about here?"
Answered Gordon, "I don't think anybody can answer that until you get further down the road."
"Well, can you ballpark it?" Stearns persisted. "Are we talking about half a billion? I would think somebody in this room with this amendment could at least give us an idea of what we're talking about."
No, said Gordon, "There are going to be transformational types of energy that we can't think of now."
Republicans were, however, able to discern that a Democratic proposal to create an office of consumer protection at the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission was aimed not to protect consumers, but power companies.
Democrats resisted dogged persistence by U.S. Rep. John Shadegg, R-Ariz., who asked them to name a single small business or home that would be able to use the new consumer protection office at FERC.
"Can you give me an example of a consumer – a small business or a residence – that would be able to take advantage of this language?" he asked the Democratic staff counsel.
"Certainly that would be up to this office to determine what they perceive to be the consumer in any particular proceeding, and to the extent that they identified that interest, represent it," came the answer.
Among the Republican proposals ditched by the Democratic majority were these:
• Clean Air Through Consumer Choice – Offered by Rep. Barton, the full Republican substitute bill "in any other Congress…would be considered very progressive and very moderate," he said. "But because it still attempts to use the market system and the price mechanism to let people make free choices on which forms of energy to use and how to use them, it is not as directive and invasive by government as the pending legislation.
• Capping Gasoline Prices at $5 a Gallon – A Terry amendment to suspend the legislation if it forces the price of gasoline above $5 per gallon. "If we can put a cap on carbon, we darn sure ought to be able to put a cap on gasoline price increases from this bill," Barton argued during the debate. Democrats disagreed, and voted to let the price go up.
• Short-Circuiting Spikes in Home Electricity Bills – Two proposals by U.S. Rep. Roy Blunt, R-Mo., and a third from U.S. Rep. George Radanovich, R-Calif., to suspend the act if the price of electricity increases beyond certain levels. The first set a limit of 10 percent above 2009 electric rates. When that was defeated, Blunt offered a second cap at 20 percent, which also was turned down by Democrats.
• Telling Families How Much Extra They'll Pay – An amendment from U.S. Rep. Marsha Blackburn, R-Tenn., to disclose the impact of Waxman-Markey on home utility bills so consumers could know how much more the act is costing them directly. The idea of letting consumers know the bill's dollars-and-cents reduction of their bank accounts was roundly denounced by Chairman Waxman, who used his time to scold the Bush Administration over the cost of "torture," "outing a CIA agent," the Securities and Exchange Commission's economic record and Federal Emergency Management Agency's operations during Hurricane Katrina.
• Capping Unemployment at 15 Percent – An amendment offered by U.S. Rep. Fred Upton, R-Mich., suspending the act to protect jobs if the unemployment rate reaches 15 percent because of the global warming bill. A second Upton proposal would shift global warming money to worker retraining if the bill propels the national jobless rate over 10 percent. Democrats overruled Republicans, however, on the Upton unemployment cap and the worker retraining amendment.
• Blocking Job Losses to China & India – An amendment from U.S. Rep. Mike Rogers, R-Mich., that would require China and India adopt a mandatory greenhouse gas reduction program "at least as stringent as that would be imposed under the act" to ensure that they cannot win a competitive advantage over the United States by failing attack global warming, too. At stake are millions of jobs that experts say will shift from America to India and China if they refuse to hobble their economies with cap-and-trade systems.
• Keeping Bureaucrats Out of Hot Tubs – A trio of amendments by Radanovich to prevent the federal government from imposing its regulatory will on "portable electric spas, hot food cabinets and water dispensers." The Democratic bill contains language – a matter initially denied by its authors – that directs federal authorities to regulate hot tubs. Republicans were cool to the idea, but hot-tub Democrats tested the water and decided it was fine.
Democrats also stuck together to block access to "off-ramps" that would have allowed autoworkers and agricultural workers to escape economic distress created directly by the global warming bill. "We can't afford to stop this forward progress," explained U.S. Rep. John Sarbanes, D-Md. Democrats further declined to develop emissions-free energy sources such as new hydroelectric power, and decided to permit the EPA to write the rules necessary to regulate water vapor as air pollution.
This is the most ethical and transparent Congress in history at work! The GOP offers 56 separate attempts to simply learn the full cost of the bill and prevent waste/corruption, and all are defeated by the Democrats. Time after time after time the Democrats deliberately and methodically voted to destroy American jobs and economic prosperity.
What we see here is, quite literally, the sowing of the seeds of the destruction of America.
This bill passed out of committee and will now come before the full House for a vote. It is especially critical for those of you who are Democrats or have Democrat Reps to sound off loudly about this. Realistically, it is only public pressure that can save us from the hell this bill will wreak on America. The GOP will probably oppose this by a vast margin (if not unanimously), so it comes down to the Dems. If enough Democrats fear hard enough for their jobs, they will back away from it, and the bill will fail.
DIAL. THE. PHONE.
There's my two cents.
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