RUSH: Apparently the Capital switchboard and individual members’ telephone lines are being inundated. You can’t get through. E-mail boxes are full. Voicemail messages are full. People are not answering the phones. Busy signals. Don’t let that deter you. Keep trying. The Waxman-Markey bill
is a disaster. It’s not about saving the planet. It’s not about saving the climate. It’s not about anything, folks, other than raising taxes and redistributing wealth. The Heritage Foundation, www.AskHeritage.org, has put together a fabulous analysis of this bill and they have summarized it in a great, understandable way. I found it because I’m a member at AskHeritage.org. It costs only 25 bucks. You can spend more if you want to if you like the cause and want to donate to it. But AskHeritage.org is a single site, a single resource — other than me. I realize a lot of you use me as your primary resource, and that’s fine. The Heritage Foundation is just a superb place as well.
‘Later today, the House of Representatives is slated to vote on the most convoluted attempt at economic central-planning this nation has ever attempted: cap and trade. The 1,200-plus page Waxman-Markey climate change legislation is nothing more than an energy tax in disguise that by 2035…’ Think your children, and this is independent of any other market forces that are going to affect the prices of these items as a mental list here. This bill alone will raise gasoline prices by 58 percent by 2035. This bill alone, in addition to whatever increases there are in gasoline between now and then, this bill will raise natural gas prices by 55 percent by 2035. It will raise home heating oil prices by 56 percent, and electricity prices by 90 percent.
Your electricity bill, by 2035, is going to go up by 90 percent. If we didn’t do this bill, I guarantee you your bill is not going to go up 90 percent between now and 2035. ‘Although proponents of the bill are pointing to grossly underestimated and incorrect costs, the reality is when all the tax impacts have been added up, the average per-family-of-four costs rise by $2,979 per year. In the year 2035 alone, the cost is $4,609,’ for a family of four, additional taxes on energy. Energy, of course, is how we move, how we get around, how we heat our homes, cool them, run our refrigerators. Basically energy is one of the building blocks of our advancing lifestyle. ‘And the costs per family for the whole energy tax aggregated from 2012 to 2035 are $71,493.’ In other words, the bill’s slated to go into effect 2012, and if you add up all of these costs for a family of four from 2012 to 2035, you’ve got to come up with $71,493 that you otherwise wouldn’t have to.
‘But on second thought, cap and trade is much more than that. It kills jobs.’ The Heritage people have analyzed this. ‘Over the 2012-2035 timeline, job losses average over 1.1 million. By 2035, a projected 2.5 million jobs are lost below the baseline (without a cap and trade bill). Particularly hard-hit are sectors of the economy that are very energy-intensive: Manufacturers, farmers, construction, machinery, electrical equipment and appliances, transportation, textiles, paper products, chemicals, plastics and rubbers and retail trade would face staggering employment losses as a result of Waxman-Markey,’ this bill. ‘It’s worth noting the job losses come after accounting for the green jobs policymakers are so adamant about creating. But don’t worry, because the architects of the bill built in unemployment insurance,’ too.
You want to hear how that works? They know that the bill is going to cream you! Listen to this. Section 432, Energy Refund Program For Low Income Consumers: ‘(1) The Administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency, or the agency designated by the Administrator shall formulate and administer the ‘Energy Refund Program’. (2) At the request of the State agency, eligible low-income households within the State shall receive a monthly cash energy refund equal to the estimated loss in purchasing power resulting from this Act.’ Now, this is just for the poor. Pay attention. This is a part where the poor get direct deposit transfers of your money. They know your ‘purchasing power’ will be lost resulting from this act! I’m reading from the act.
Let me read this again: ‘(1) The Administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency, or the agency designated by the Administrator shall formulate and administer the ‘Energy Refund Program’. (2) At the request of the State agency, eligible low-income households within the State shall receive a monthly cash energy refund equal to the estimated loss in purchasing power resulting from this Act.’ They intend to raise prices on energy. They intend to make you use less of it. They intend for you to be less mobile. They intend for you to be less comfortable. They intend for you to have less disposable income. Disposable income is liberty! Disposable income is freedom. They intend for you to have less of it. What’s an ‘eligible household’?
Well… ‘Participation in the Energy Refund Program shall be limited to a household that (B) has gross income that does not exceed 150 percent of the poverty line. … (c) Monthly Energy Refund Amount — ‘(1) Subject to standards and an implementation schedule set by the Administrator, the energy refund shall be provided in monthly installments via — (A) direct deposit into the eligible household’s designated bank account.’ Barack Obama and the Democrat Party intend to just ‘direct deposit’ your money into the bank accounts of the poor because of their ‘loss of purchasing power’ due to the passage of this act. Your loss of purchasing power is not going to be compensated. In addition to paying these new taxes, you are also going to be redistributing or have redistributed your wealth to the poor.
It’s straight out of Barack Obama. This is who he is, what he wants to do. This is a redistribution scheme. This is an attack on achievers. It’s an attack on wealth disguised as something to get to your heart by convincing you that voting for this, supporting this is somehow going to save Woody Woodpecker, Peter Polar Bear, Flipper and deformed frogs. Not to mention your own child’s climate. They don’t even have the guts to call this a carbon tax. So much for transparency! So much for liberal straight talk. It’s a carbon tax. They’re taxing carbon. We’re a carbon-based life form. We inhale carbon dioxide. This bill says that we are polluters by virtue of breathing, which we have no choice about, by the way. We can’t stop, as long as we’re alive. They could tax us on that basis. It just is absurd. They ought to call this Waxman-Markey-Madoff, because it’s a con game. It promises what it cannot deliver.
It cannot change the climate and it certainly is not going to bring about more jobs. He called it a ‘jobs bill’ yesterday. Mr. President, tell us how many. How many jobs is this going to cost us? Now, you rattle off all these new jobs, but how about the existing jobs that we’re going to lose? How many more jobs will be lost than the jobs created? George Will yesterday: ‘The Spanish professor is puzzled. Why, Gabriel Calzada wonders, is the US president recommending that America emulate the Spanish model for creating ‘green jobs’ in ‘alternative energy’ even though Spain’s unemployment rate is 18.1 percent — more than double the European Union average — partly because of spending on such jobs?’ The Spaniards have tried it. They’ve got 18.1% unemployment. The Australians tried it; they’re seeing the light. The Japanese are seeing the light. Spanish professor: Why is Obama doing this when he can see it hasn’t created any jobs. The net job action is a loss, and he’s not going to tell us how many jobs are lost.
‘Calzada, 36, an economics professor at Universidad Rey Juan Carlos, has produced a report that, if true, is inconvenient for the Obama administration’s green agenda, and for some budget assumptions that are dependent upon it.’ The professor ‘says Spain’s torrential spending — no other nation has so aggressively supported production of electricity from renewable sources — on wind farms and other forms of alternative energy has indeed created jobs. But Calzada’s report concludes that they often are temporary and’ these jobs, in order to be created ‘have received $752,000 to $800,000 each in subsidies…’ In other words, that’s how much it costs to create a job so you can go out and say, ‘Heyyyy, look at the job we created!’ This is what it costs per job in Spain: 800 grand.
‘[W]ind industry jobs cost even more, $1.4 million each. And each new job entails the loss of 2.2 other jobs that are either lost or not created in other industries because of the political allocation … of capital,’ of money. Deplete the private sector, existing energy sources. Turn it over to these new inventors. You lose jobs when you take money from existing private sector businesses. There is no market, there is no technology yet to do wind and support ourselves. So you have to subsidize these businesses and hire these people, and in Spain it costs $1.4 million to hire new employees. It’s total insanity, and that’s why this Spanish professor cannot understand why Obama’s going through with this.
‘(European media regularly report ‘eco-corruption’ leaving a ‘footprint of sleaze’ — gaming the subsidy systems, profiteering from land sales for wind farms, etc.),’ but Professor ‘Calzada says the creation of jobs in alternative energy has subtracted about 110,000 jobs elsewhere in Spain’s economy’ — elsewhere. So all these new jobs — these new green jobs and all the costs to get them, produce them — has lost 110,000 jobs elsewhere in Spain’s economy and that’s why they are at 18.1 percent. ‘The president’s press secretary, Robert Gibbs, was asked about the report’s contention that the political diversion of capital into green jobs has cost Spain jobs. The White House transcript contained this exchange: Gibbs: ‘It seems weird that we’re importing wind turbine parts from Spain in order to build — to meet renewable energy demand here if that were even remotely the case.’ Questioner: ‘Is that a suggestion that his study is simply flat wrong?’ Gibbs: ‘I haven’t read the study, but I think, yes.’ Questioner: ‘Well, then. (laughter.)’
‘Actually, what is weird is this idea: A sobering report about Spain’s experience must be false because otherwise the behavior of some American importers, seeking to cash in on the US government’s promotion of wind power, might be participating in an economically unproductive project.’ The administration wants you to think that what’s happening in Spain is simply an aberration, it isn’t true, and we can go ahead and import ideas from Spain. ‘Windmills are iconic in the land of Don Quixote, whose tilting at them became emblematic of comic futility. Spain’s new windmills are neither amusing nor emblematic of policies America should emulate. The cheerful and evidently unshakable confidence in such magical solutions to postulated problems is yet another manifestation — Republicans are not immune:
‘No Child Left Behind decrees that by 2014 all American students will be proficient in math and reading — of what the late senator Pat Moynihan called ‘the leakage of reality from American life.” There is no reality in this. The reality is out there for us to see around the world. We’re ignoring it. That’s what’s at stake with this legislation. And I know it’s hard for a lot of people to believe that their fellow citizens, elected officials would do something this destructive. If you don’t understand modern-day, left-wing, statist-oriented Democratic Party, if you don’t understand — and you can’t. I mean, I don’t. I can’t relate to having the desire, that much power to control people’s lives, to limit other people’s freedom. I can’t relate to it. I understand it through history. I understand it’s horrible.
I don’t want somebody having that kind of power over me. A lot of people can’t understand that there are actually Americans, a significant number of them in electoral power, that have that desire. Well, they do, and the evidence is all around you in just the first six months of this administration. All you’ve got to do is open up your eyes and admit it. It’s as plain as day. You can stay in denial as long as you want, and as long as you stay in denial the more disposable income you’re going to lose and the more of your hard work and income produced from it is going to be transferred to somebody else who doesn’t deserve it…and for what? How does that benefit you or somebody else? How does it benefit the US economy? It doesn’t. It destroys it. President Obama, ‘Yes, we can!’
No, you won’t.