The so-called American Power Act seeks to tax carbon emissions from “coal-fired power plants and other large polluters.”
Sounds great, doesn't it? But knowing government as we all do, we must ask about the hidden costs and the how the numbers were derived. As history has shown us again and again, government (and particularly Congress) have a tendency to underestimate the costs of new mandates and programs and overestimate the revenues or benefits derived from them. The fact that the cost estimates come from the EPA makes me skeptical the numbers are even close to being realistic. One must keep in mind that it will be the EPA regulating CO2 emissions since it has now been erroneously classified a pollutant.
A climate and energy bill being pushed in the Senate would cost American households 22 to 40 cents a day -- less than the cost of a first-class postage stamp, the Obama administration said Tuesday.
An analysis by the Environmental Protection Agency concluded that the Senate bill, sponsored by Sens. John Kerry, D-Mass., and Joe Lieberman, I-Conn., would cost households an average of $79 to $146 per year. A first-class postage stamp costs 44 cents.
It would not surprise me to see all kinds of amendments to this bill, most of them intended to turn it into a stealth Cap-And-Tax law.
It doesn't help that the White House is using the oil spill in the Gulf as a rallying cry to choke off the supply of oil and other fossil fuels “for our own good.” Not that this bill will have any effect on the oil spill or its side effects. All it's designed to do is make energy more expensive all in the name of saving the planet even though no one can rightfully prove it needs saving. But that's never stopped the Left from doing it anyway.