Thread: Who's LYING? CBS News or Obama

CBS says:

http://www.cbsnews.com/blogs/2009/09/15 ... 4040.shtml

Obama Admin: Cap And Trade Could Cost Families $1,761 A Year


(AP)The Obama administration has privately concluded that a cap and trade law would cost American taxpayers up to $200 billion a year, the equivalent of hiking personal income taxes by about 15 percent.

A previously unreleased analysis prepared by the U.S. Department of Treasury says the total in new taxes would be between $100 billion to $200 billion a year. At the upper end of the administration's estimate, the cost per American household would be an extra $1,761 a year.

A second memorandum, which was prepared for Obama's transition team after the November election, says this about climate change policies: "Economic costs will likely be on the order of 1 percent of GDP, making them equal in scale to all existing environmental regulation."

The documents (PDF) were obtained under the Freedom of Information Act by the free-market Competitive Enterprise Institute and released on Tuesday.

These disclosures will probably not aid the political prospects of the Democrats' cap and trade bill. The House of Representatives approved it by a remarkably narrow margin in June -- the bill would have failed if only six House members had switched their votes to "no" -- and it faces significant opposition in the Senate.

One reason the bill faces an uncertain future is concern about its cost. House Republican Leader John Boehner has estimated the additional tax bill would be at $366 billion a year, or $3,100 a year per family. Democrats have pointed to estimates from MIT's John Reilly, who put the cost at $800 a year per family, and noted that tax credits to low income households could offset part of the bite. The Heritage Foundation says that, by 2035, "the typical family of four will see its direct energy costs rise by over $1,500 per year."

One difference is that while Heritage's numbers are talking about 26 years in the future, the Treasury Department's figures don't have a time limit.

"Heritage is saying publicly what the administration is saying to itself privately," says Christopher Horner, a senior fellow at the Competitive Enterprise Institute who filed the FOIA request. "It's nice to see they're not spinning each other behind closed doors."

"They're not telling you the cost -- they're not telling you the benefit," says Horner, who wrote the Politically Incorrect Guide to Global Warming. "If they don't tell you the cost, and they don't tell you the benefit, what are they telling you? They're just talking about global salvation."

The FOIA'd document written by Judson Jaffe, who joined the Treasury Department's Office of Environment and Energy in January 2009, says: "Given the administration's proposal to auction all emission allowances, a cap-and-trade program could generate federal receipts on the order of $100 to $200 billion annually." (Obviously, any final cap-and-trade system may be different from what Obama had proposed, and could yield higher or lower taxes.)

Because personal income tax revenues bring in around $1.37 trillion a year, a $200 billion additional tax would be the equivalent of a 15 percent increase a year. A $100 billion additional tax would represent a 7 or 8 percent increase a year.

One odd point: The document written by Jaffee includes this line: "It will raise energy prices and impose annual costs on the order of XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX." The Treasury Department redacted the rest of the sentence with a thick black line.

The Freedom of Information Act, of course, contains no this-might-embarrass-the-president exemption (nor, for that matter, should federal agencies be in the business of possibly suppressing dissenting climate change voices). You'd hope the presidential administration that boasts of being the "most open and transparent in history" would be more forthcoming than this.

Update 9/16/2009: The Environmental Defense Fund has responded to the documents' release with a statement saying, in part:
Even if a 100 percent auction was a live legislative proposal, which it's not, that math ignores the redistribution of revenue back to consumers. It only looks at one side of the balance sheet. It would only be true if you think the Administration was going to pile all the cash on the White House lawn and set it on fire.

The bill passed by the House sends the value of pollution permits to consumers, and it contains robust cost-containment provisions. Every credible and independent economic analysis of the American Clean Energy and Security Act (such as those done by the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office, the Energy Information Administration, and the Environmental Protection Agency) says the costs will be small and affordable -- and that the U.S. economy will grow with a cap on carbon.
Update 9/17/2009: I've written a followup article to respond to erroneous claims from the Center for American Progress.

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Declan McCullagh is a correspondent for CBSNews.com. He can be reached at declan@cbsnews.com. You can bookmark the Taking Liberties site here, or subscribe to the RSS feed.

Obama side was saying:

http://mediamatters.org/research/200904060021

Several media figures and outlets, including Fox News anchors Eric Shawn and Alisyn Camerota, Roll Call, and CNN congressional producer Ted Barrett have uncritically repeated or failed to challenge the Republican claim that President Obama's cap-and-trade proposal would cost the average U.S. household more than $3,000 per year. The claim was advanced by the House Republican Conference in a March 23 "Talking Points" press release, and the Republicans reportedly purported to back up the claim by pointing to a 2007 study by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). But MIT professor John Reilly, one of the authors of the study, has disputed the GOP's calculation, stating that his study "has been misrepresented" and that the Republicans' claim of an average household cost of $3,128 is "nearly 10 times the correct estimate" based on his study's cap-and-trade model.

an M.I.T. report that says a similar a cap-and-trade proposal (the administration has not yet detailed their own version) would raise $366 billion per year. If you divide that by the 117 million households in the United States, you find it would cost each household $3,128, they said." On April 1, Reilly wrote a letter to House Republican Leader John Boehner (OH) (which Think Progress posted on its website) stating that the Republicans' methodology was flawed and that the study "has been misrepresented." Reilly wrote that this talking point "claims our report estimates an average cost per family of a carbon cap and trade program that would meet targets now being discussed in Congress to be over $3,000, but that is nearly 10 times the correct estimate which is approximately $340."

but earlier, he said this
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5xOxwW4Toio

a cap-and-trade program could generate federal receipts on the order of $100 to $200 billion annually.

If we keep loosing jobs at the current rate and if illegal aliens and visa'd workers are putting more American citizens out of work along with unbalanced trade agreements that export even more American jobs who is the government going to be able to tax to get this money?

Between health care reform, cap and trade, free trade and immigration, the United States will cease to exist as anything other than a Banana Republic of impoverished slaves and our governments will be struggling to fix pot-holes, let alone defend our country, secure our borders, provide for the elderly and those who can't sustain themselves.

It's a downward spiral that will soon cross the point of no return if Americans don't wake up, get smart, do the math and stop this disaster.

We're being dissolved internatlly ... by the numbers .... the number of debt obligations, the number of unemployed, the number in poverty, the number pouring over the borders, the number being lured in on visas, the number of imports. We're spiraling to the bottom out-of-control.

Originally Posted by avenger

a cap-and-trade program could generate federal receipts on the order of $100 to $200 billion annually.

If we keep loosing jobs at the current rate and if illegal aliens and visa'd workers are putting more American citizens out of work along with unbalanced trade agreements that export even more American jobs who is the government going to be able to tax to get this money?

Valid point but then again you are using common sense. Cap and Trade isn't about anything other than political expediency directed at his far left base. Unfortunately, that same far left base has always been about ideology, not common sense or financial responsibility.

Originally Posted by TexasBorn

Originally Posted by avenger

a cap-and-trade program could generate federal receipts on the order of $100 to $200 billion annually.

If we keep loosing jobs at the current rate and if illegal aliens and visa'd workers are putting more American citizens out of work along with unbalanced trade agreements that export even more American jobs who is the government going to be able to tax to get this money?

Valid point but then again you are using common sense. Cap and Trade isn't about anything other than political expediency directed at his far left base. Unfortunately, that same far left base has always been about ideology, not common sense or financial responsibility.

Exactly, Texasborn.

Perhaps we can trade countries; the American people can invade Mexico and send the remaining Mexican population to America. obama and the Fascist and the Mexican dictators can rule this new country of Mexico . And the American people can set up a new gov't in Mexico based on our constitution. And this time around, New Americans will ensure that no Illegals get into our new country and destroy it and bankrupt us. And we can ensure that any future politicians are American citizens and love us and our constitution. I know this is fantasy but it makes me feel better if only briefly.

obama lies the way people breathe.

Originally Posted by TexasBorn

Valid point but then again you are using common sense. Cap and Trade isn't about anything other than political expediency directed at his far left base. Unfortunately, that same far left base has always been about ideology, not common sense or financial responsibility.

The deal that is being pushed at Copenhagen is for the Western democracies to "pay for their past sins" of carbon footprint by funneling $20 billion (to start) and eventually $100 billion (when the program hits its stride) to the Third World / China / India. Cap and trade would be to help fund that, but then in the "Land of Obama Math" he also claims that the revenues from Cap and Trade would be turned around to "help the middle class" which will probably be slitting its wrists at that point due to the high cost of electricity and fuel and consumer goods whose prices rise because of the "purchased carbon credits" that manufacturing plants have to buy. Utter insanity.

AND ... it's all based on BOGUS SCIENCE because the so-called studies that the Al Gore's of the world rely on, to claim global warming, have now been shown to have hidden their data about the NOT MAN MADE middle ages global warming period or to be drawing data from close to urban centers (and leaving out the more remote locations) or to have wrongly assumed that all the gases are trapped greenhouse style (which the recent MIT study showed wasn't true).

POLITICAL AGENDA written large.