It’s a tax hike and welfare rolled into one. What could Democrats love more?
According to Friday’s Washington Times, the legislation includes language that provides, should it become law, that people who lose their jobs because of it “could get a weekly paycheck for up to three years, subsidies to find new work and other generous benefits—courtesy of Uncle Sam.”
Politico has a story up about how Democratic congressmen hailing from more right-leaning districts might have an uphill reelection battle if they voted for cap and trade last week.
Rep. Thomas Perriello relishes an energy fight with Republicans — even here in the rural Southside.
The freshman lawmaker understands the potential consequences that he and other vulnerable Democrats face for backing a sweeping climate-change bill, and rather than ducking the issue, he’s embracing what may have been the toughest vote of his young political career. …
Like many Democrats from Republican-leaning districts, Perriello is back home this week defending what may be a game-changing vote with consequences for 2010.
Nothing unusual about this story, right? We expected Democrats from more conservative areas of town to have a tough time defending their votes on some of the more left-wing parts of Obama and Pelosi’s agenda. The fact is that being a Democrat in rural America isn’t exactly like being a Democrat in San Francisco – but unfortunately, a lot of that distinction gets lost in the House roll call and congressmen end up paying for it back home.
The interesting part to this story comes later, though. Two different people – a political science professor at the University of Virginia and an economic development consultant – offer their opinion about how cap and trade might affect voter opinion. They both say essentially the same thing. First the economic development consultant:
“What’s going to increase the price of energy more?” asks E. Linwood Wright, an economic development consultant with the city of Danville, Va., in Perriello’s district. “The things in this bill? Or crude oil going back to $150-a-barrel?”
That’s a good question, Ms. Wright! What will increase the price of energy more? Gas prices, or cap and trade?
The only problem is, why would gas prices go back up to $150-a-barrel? Is there a reason we should think that gas prices will skyrocket again? I thought the reason they were so high was because of the evil Republicans who refused to regulate the oil companies. With Democrats in control, we shouldn’t worry about that, should we?
Or maybe Democrats want gas prices to skyrocket so that no one will notice how cap and trade is silently raising the price of almost every good and service on the market. What you’re basically saying is that cap and trade will raise prices, but it won’t be as bad as skyrocketing gas prices. (If gas prices skyrocket.) So do Democrats now have a vested interest in skyrocketing gas prices so that people will be too distracted by fueling their cars to notice what cap and trade has done to the price of everything else?
Wright, though, only hints at what Larry Sabato states pretty bluntly:
However, “if the economy improves,” Sabato continued, “voters won’t find the attacks credible. Really, how is anybody — even a professional economist — to know exactly what the effect of this bill will be? It’s so entangled with the rest of the economy.”
Sabato is really just stating the facts and I don’t smell a motive of any kind here. What he’s saying is true: our economy is so big and complicated, how is any regular voter going to figure out what problems cap and trade has caused and what problems were caused by something else?
If cap and trade turns into law and prices start to rise, you can guarantee that Democrats are going to start pointing every which direction in an attempt to scapegoat the blame onto anything but their precious bill.
And they’ll hope that voters are stupid enough to believe them.
When Pelosi and crew narrowly passed their piece of garbage cap and trade bill last week, lots of conservatives railed about how no one voting for the bill has actually read it. In fact, Ed Morrissey at Hot Air pointed out that Obama’s energy czar hadn’t even read the bill.
Turns out the stink of cap and trade is worse than we thought. Apparently there are provisions in the bill that will require homeowners to “retrofit” their homes to be environmentally friendly before they can sell them. Reread that sentence and let that soak in. If you are a homeowner and want to sell your house, under this bill you would have to pass an environmental inspection before you can:
The 1,400-page cap-and-trade legislation pushed through by House Democrats contains a new federal policy that residential, commercial, and government buildings be retrofitted to increase energy efficiency, leaving it up to the states to figure out exactly how to do that.
This means that homeowners, for example, could be required to retrofit their homes to meet federal “green” guidelines in order to sell their homes, if the cap-and-trade bill becomes law.
The bill, which now goes to the Senate, directs the administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to develop and implement a national policy for residential and commercial buildings. The purpose of such a strategy – known as the Retrofit for Energy and Environmental Performance (REEP) – would be to “facilitate” the retrofitting of existing buildings nationwide.
So much for any semblance of respecting the private sector by the Democrats. This is disgusting – to suggest that the home you currently own – which already passed every thinkable inspection necessary for it to be built – would be required to meet some new absurd environmental standards before you could sell it.
Welcome to Obama’s American: where some arm of the federal government has a say in just about everything you do.
At least this bill looks to die in the Senate. That’s good news for now.
A little good news today after Pelosi jammed this piece of garbage down our throats last week:
The cap and trade bill that narrowly passed in the House last week won’t get more than 35 votes in the Senate–despite the additional, presumed “yea” from Al Franken
In Franken’s victory speech yesterday he made a comment about how he isn’t the “60th” Democrat but the “2nd Minnesota Senator.” That was apparently the first joke Senator Doofus has made in two years.
Franken isn’t just a Democrat and he isn’t just a liberal. The guy is a screaming nutcase who is as radical as they come. CNN gives us a quick rundown on his positions on some major issues which include support for a single-payer health care system and “comprehensive immigration reform.”
In reality, Franken as the 60th vote (instead of say, the 59th vote) is pretty insignificant – especially compared to what cable news will make of it. Republicans controlled the wheels of the government for most of the eight years Bush was in office with majorities much smaller than what the Democrats have in the Senate right now.
The talk of this 60th vote to protect against the filibuster was just Harry Reid’s way of stalling from having to implement every whim and desire of the loony left. Much of the Democrats agenda – a second stimulus, mass amnesty to illegal aliens, health care reform that will cost trillions, and cap and tax – are too extreme for the American public and not what they bargained for in November when they elected a party promising bipartisanship and low taxes. To his credit, Reid understands this and hasn’t been making extraordinarily drastic moves like we’d see if the crew at dKos were in charge.
As much as it just sucks that someone like Al Franken will actually be given the honor of being called Senator, we aren’t in any worse shape today than we were last week.
To be fair, though, last week we were in pretty bad shape.
After urging the Senate to support the House cap and trade bill, Obama told reporters that he doesn’t support trade sanctions as part of environmental protections:
President Obama on Sunday praised the energy bill passed by the House late last week as an “extraordinary first step,” but he spoke out against a provision that would impose trade penalties on countries that do not accept limits on global warming pollution. …
Mr. Obama, hoping to build momentum in the Senate after the narrow victory in the House, delayed the start of a Sunday golf game to speak to a small group of reporters in the Oval Office.
He acknowledged that the initial targets for reducing emissions of heat-trapping gases set by the House bill were quite modest and would probably not satisfy the governments of other countries or many environmental groups. But he said he hoped to build on those early targets in fashioning a more robust program in the future as part of his administration’s efforts to move the nation from an economy based on fossil fuels toward one built on renewable energy sources.
Well I’m glad we can take an “extraordinary first step” in combating climate change. Tell me why, again, the President thinks it is so important to pass a bill he doesn’t even think is robust enough and includes trade restrictions he doesn’t support.
Treason against the United States: No problem.
Treason against the planet: Inexcusable.
Of course, it’s the Republicans that hate science, right?
Cap and trade – what could be more fun?