The New Car Tax Heading Your Way

First, the setup:

I can make a firm pledge. Under my plan, no family making less than $250,000 a year will see any form of tax increase. Not your income tax, not your payroll tax, not your capital gains taxes, not any of your taxes.

- then-candidate Barack Obama, 9/12/2008.

A senior administration official said the new standards would raise the cost of an average car by $1,300, $600 of which could be attributed to the rules being announced today.

- Washington Post, on the Obama administration's new auto emissions standards, 5/19/2009.

This was mentioned earlier.  Now, some more details:

Just what Americans need right now...
Obama's emissions limits plan will cost Americans $1,300 per vehicle.
The AP reported:

President Barack Obama's new fuel and emission standards for cars and trucks will save billions of barrels of oil but are expected to cost consumers an extra $1,300 per vehicle by the time the plan is complete in 2016.

Obama on Tuesday planned to announce the first-ever national emissions limits for vehicles, as well as require an overall or industry average fuel efficiency standard at 35.5 miles per gallon...

Administration officials said consumers were going to pay an extra $700, anyway, for mileage standards that had already been approved. The Obama plan adds another $600 to the price of a vehicle, a senior administration official said, bringing the total cost to $1,300 by 2016.

Democrats are also moving their cap and trade legislation through committee this week. The cap and trade plan will cost Americans $700 to $1,400 dollars per family per year.

So, between emissions and cap and trade legislation that is being discussed this week Democrats are dumping something like $2,000 of cost on American families per year.

Those who possess common sense also understand that essentially every time the government estimates the cost of a new program or tax increase, the reality will actually be far, far more expensive.  So, just figure double this amount as a starting point for how you will be affected if Obama gets his planned increases.  Speaking for the safety concerns, Ace of Spades suggests that the new CAFE standards will actually kill more Americans than the Iraq War.

Obama's standards will require automakers to meet a 35 miles-per-gallon standard by 2016 — four years earlier than the same standard imposed by the Energy Security and Independence Act of 2007.

As discussed in my new book Green Hell, the only way for carmakers to meet these standard is to make smaller, lighter and deadlier cars.

The National Academy of Sciences has linked mileage standards with about 2,000 deaths per year. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration estimates that every 100-pound reduction in the weight of small cars increases annual traffic fatalities by as much as 715.

In contrast in the more than six years since the Iraq war began, there have been 4,296 deaths among American military personnel.

But there's more:

And for a struggling auto industry, it will cost more to retool plants and meet new efficiency requirements, which could be an invitation to more taxpayer-funded bailouts:

The companies will have to redesign their vehicles faster than planned to meet the 2016 target, 'and that makes for a lot of expense because you can't recoup the cost for whatever you've invested,' said K.G. Duleep, managing director of consulting firm Energy & Environmental Analysis Inc. in Arlington, Virginia."

Energy efficiency is a good thing, but it rarely works when the government forces standards on businesses. Although touted as a measure to curb global warming, fuel efficiency standards have very little environmental impact. Newer vehicles with better efficiency standards may emit less carbon dioxide per mile, but increased fuel efficiency often leads to more driving and new cars "constitute a miniscule source of overall carbon dioxide emissions."

CAFE standards raise the price of the vehicle while making cars and trucks lighter, and ultimately, less safe.

Right.  Remember just how small a portion of the atmosphere that horrible and catastrophic carbon dioxide is?  0.038%.  Essentially nothing.  But, to liberal greenies, that's going to doom the planet to irreparable harm.

And cars provide a 'miniscule' portion of that 0.038%!

Can we please get real?  Nope.  Sadly, we're instead going to be paying thousands of extra dollars per year and hundreds more people will be dying each year in order to maybe-possibly-hopefully reduce a miniscule portion of a really miniscule portion of the atmospheric gas that is a naturally occurring substance but that liberals think is destroying the planet.

Good call.  This is what happens when liberal Democrats are in charge.

There's my two cents.