Cap and Trade Bill to Skyrocket Energy Prices and Redistribute Wealth

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Cap and Trade Bill to Skyrocket Energy Prices and Redistribute Wealth

16 April 2009 9 Comments

smokestackpollution

BY: NCViking

The newly formed Climate Equity Alliance, an organization of powerful special interest groups, is throwing its weight behind CO2 Cap and Trade legislation. The group openly advocates artificially rising energy prices through this program to force individuals and businesses into supposed greener options, while moving the money collected from this tax to low income families – hence, yet more veiled redistribution of wealth.

From CNSNews:

President Obama’s “cap and trade” plan to reduce greenhouse gas emissions is specifically designed to drive up energy prices and redistribute wealth, according to a coalition of environmental, union, and liberal activist groups that is pushing for Congress to enact the proposal this year.

The plan would also redistribute wealth by taking revenue earned by the government in auctioning off carbon-emission permits and giving some of it in rebates to lower income households to offset the increased energy prices they would pay. The rest of the revenue would be used to subsidize the development of alternative “green” energy sources.

“The purpose of the cap, the way it works, is that you are capping fossil fuel energy–you’re limiting the supply to a lower level than would otherwise be used,” Robert Greenstein, executive director of the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, told CNSNews.com last week. “Demand then has to fall to meet that level of supply at the cap level and demand falls by virtue of prices rising–this is basic economics.”

“The higher price for fossil fuel energy creates very powerful incentives for conservation, for efficiency with the appropriate investments . . . and for shifting to alternative greener sources of energy,” he said.

Greenstein said that although alternative forms of energy are costly now, they will in time “become less costly” under an emissions cap.

“The key, though, is that if the permits are auctioned, the revenue that is produced can offset the impact on consumers’ budgets through rebates,” he said.

“We (Climate Equity Alliance) do believe consumer relief can be provided in part through the tax code for low-income working families, in part through the Electronic Benefit Transfer (EBT) system that every state in the country already uses,” he said.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture describes EBT as an electronic system where someone receiving government aid can pay a retailer by having their benefits transferred electronically to the retailer’s account.

Not only is this stupid legislation being formed to combat a problem that doesn’t exist, now it’s being suggested that it create “social equity”. It’s no accident that the organization’s name is the Climate “Equity” Alliance and contains groups like the NAACP and ACORN. The pure liberal muscle behind this alliance, shouting in the ear of Henry Waxman and Mark Ma(la)rky, is likely to ‘see to it’ that Cap and Trade legislation is crafted the way the organization members want.

Here is what the CEA principles have to say (emphasis mine):

The money generated by placing a price on carbon will be substantial, amounting to tens to hundreds of billions of dollars a year. This resource should be used to invest in the public good by ensuring an inclusive and fair transition to a high-road green economy, which advances the needs of workers, consumers, families, and diverse urban and rural communities while protecting the planet.

There is nothing ‘fair’ about artificially skyrocketing energy costs on us all through taxation, while transferring the spoils of this theft only to a select few. This is just another form of class warfare and does absolutely nothing to change a climate that’s in a completely ordinary, natural cycle. It’s an absolute scam and boondoggle of the highest proportions! If you think these Tax Tea Parties displayed public frustration and anger, just wait until this albatross is enacted.

I’m with Glen Beck: Obama (and the Democrats) are you trying to set us on fire?!