Thread: Inhofe:Obama Would Impose New Energy Tax on Everyone

Obama Would Impose New Energy Tax on Everyone
by Sen. James Inhofe
03/26/2009

Over the next few weeks we will be arguing the merits of an issue that I have spent nearly 10 years debating as a rank-and-file member, former chairman and now ranking member of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee. That issue is global warming and a cap-and-trade program to regulate greenhouse gases. Now, the President has included such a cap-and-trade proposal in his budget.

The President did a good thing by including an estimate of the revenues that will be generated under such a proposal in his budget. It allows us to have an honest debate about the costs to the American people of a program of this magnitude -- not to mention the enormous redistribution of wealth for pet projects and programs under the umbrella of “clean energyâ€

No cap and trade. It's the most idiotic thing in the universe.

Dem sens press to sidestep GOP on climate change

By Walter Alarkon
Posted: 03/28/09 04:17 PM [ET]

A group of junior Democratic senators are pressing their more senior colleagues to push through a controversial climate change bill by attaching it to a special budget legislative maneuver.

Sens. Ben Cardin (D-Md.), Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.), Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.) and Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) have said that the budget reconciliation process should be used to get a climate change bill past a GOP filibuster. Reconciliation bills need only a simple majority to move through the Senate, instead of the 60 votes needed to overcome filibusters.

Cardin, Whitehouse and Sanders, all serving their first term, argued during budget hearings this week that the cap-and-trade climate change system that they and the president favor should be attached to a reconciliation bill because it would raise revenues that could be used to cut budget deficits.

"Budget reconciliation was created so you could take a controversial issue such as reducing the deficit, which usually means increasing revenues or reducing entitlements to get an up-or-down vote without it being filibustered," Cardin told The Hill. "That was the concept of budget reform. That's exactly what we're doing with the energy bill."

President Reagan used the reconciliation process in the 1980s to reduce spending while President George W. Bush used it more recently to push through tax cuts.

Obama's budget outlined a cap-and-trade system that would place limits on carbon dioxide emissions in an effort to curb global warming. To exceed those limits, companies would need to obtain permits that would initially be auctioned off by the government. The auctions would raise $646 billion in revenue over the next decade, according to Obama's plan. The president has proposed using the revenue to pay for the permanent extension of a middle-class tax cut that will expire at the end of 2010 and for the development of new clean energy sources.

Most Republicans have strongly opposed the cap-and-trade system, saying that emissions limits would drive up prices for consumers and thus amount to a broad-based energy tax.

Key Democrats have voiced concern about the emissions limits and the use of reconciliation to enact them. Senators from energy-producing states, including Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio) and Kent Conrad (D-N.D.), have called for more of a focus on programs that would reduce the country's dependence on foreign oil.

Conrad, the Senate Budget Committee chairman, left the cap-and-trade system and plans for reconciliation out of his budget outline, which was approved by his committee Thursday. The full Senate will take up Conrad's budget next week.

Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus (D-Mont.) has warned against the use of reconciliation for healthcare reform. Eight other Democrats joined most GOP senators in signing a letter arguing against the use of the special process for climate change, saying that it would be inconsistent with the Obama administration's goal of bipartisanship.

But neither Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) nor the White House has ruled out the use of the special process.

"Reconciliation is not where we'd like to start, but we are not willing to take it off the table," said White House Budget Directer Peter Orszag told reporters Wednesday.

Sen. Judd Gregg (N.H.), the ranking Republican on the Senate Budget Committee, has already seen one signal that top Democrats will resort to reconciliation. He noted that the Democrats' budget resolution being taken up in the House includes instructions to use a reconciliation bill for healthcare legislation.

"The only reason [reconciliation is] in the House is so they can be jammed through the Senate in a conference report," Gregg said during a budget hearing on Wednesday. "That's a terrible thing to do to the tradition and the status of the Senate."

Whitehouse told The Hill that he wouldn't propose an amendment on reconciliation because he knew that it doesn't have the votes to win approval. But he signaled that Environment and Public Works Committee Chairwoman Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) would support using reconciliation to get a cap-and-trade system past a filibuster.

"I don't want to speak for her, but I would conclude that anybody as passionate as she is on the climate change crisis wouldn't support the rights of Republicans to over-and-over-over again to block" significant legislation such as a cap-and-trade bill, Whitehouse said.

http://thehill.com/leading-the-news/dem ... 03-28.html

I wonder if I will ever see a realistic energy policy in my lifetime!

Wonder Boy has been bought and paid for! The highest priced prostitute on the strip.

Those who voted for this prostitute should be checked for STD's.

Those enviro wackos that crawl under the feet of fattened swine have just been crapped on again! How does the organic waste taste! Suckers!

Stock tip. Buy coal stocks. Offset the price of your utilities.