If you thought NAFTA created a “giant sucking sound,” you haven’t heard anything yet.  This morning, the Waxman-Markey Global Warming Bill passed a test vote, and Nancy Pelosi promises that Obama’s Cap & Trade plan will face a true vote before she goes on her Fourth Of July vacation.   The bill essentially taxes greenhouse emissions by American corporations, while doing nothing to slow imports from overseas companies which do not fall under its purview.

According to research paid for by the Heritage Foundation, expected effects of the bill’s passage include:

• A 58% increase in gasoline prices
• A 55% increase in natural gas prices
• A 56% increase in home heating oil prices
• A 90% increase in electricity
• Average job losses of 1.1 million per year between 2012-2035 as factories leave the country.
• Family of four cost living increase of at least $2,979 per year
•  GDP loss of $9.4 trillion between 2012-2035

The Congressional Budget Office has released numbers that are less grim, but are also based best-case-scenario predictions about oil prices, the economy, technological advances, factory emissions, consumption, and the creation of theoretical “green jobs.”  

We here at The Robalution are big fans of the environment.  We spend 100% of our time surrounded by it.  Like the great Teddy Roosevelt, we believe that the natural world is a treasure, and its protection should be a priority.  Unfortunately, the Cap & Trade tax machine doesn’t actually have any substantive environmental impact.  According to climatologists, the measure will reduce global warming by a few hundredths of a degree by 2050 and only a tenth of a degree by the end of the century.  Of course, China will pick up the slack created by our hampered manufacturing sector and, given that they have almost no laws regarding pollution, do far greater damage than we would have had the new laws not been implemented.  This will more than offset whatever barely-detectable good the bill does.

For audio of Obama discussing the plan, and revelling in its destructive impact, we have the following clip.

 

Obama’s decisions have already cost the US two million jobs and counting.   Michigan’s decimated manufacturing sector has sent the state’s unemployment rate to a whopping 14%.   For whatever reason, Obama, Pelosi, Waxman, and Markey have decided that this is the time to push for a full scale economic holocaust.  Cap & Trade is nothing more than tax scam that gives massive amounts of power and money to the federal government, achieves none of its alleged goals, and promises “green jobs”  that remain as nebulous and ill-defined as Obama’s Iraq exit strategy.

That said, the Cap & Trade tax machine will certainly create jobs.  It’s just a shame they won’t be in this country. 

-Robert Laurie