Jack Gerard
Jane Van Ryan
The most recent Congressional Budget Office (CBO) calculations for the Waxman-Markey climate bill give new meaning to the term "rosy scenario."
CBO pegs the annual household cost of Waxman-Markey at $175 per household, yet its own report suggests gasoline could rise 77 cents a gallon. That's $800 more a year just for gasoline, assuming a family uses 20 gallons a week. CBO claims that free emission allowances will offset this, but these go to businesses and government--not consumers.
Unlike other analyses, including EPA's, CBO assumes the legislation won't slow down the economy. But tweak CBO's assumptions with common sense and the annual household bill is more like $3,300. And that's in 2020 before the emissions cap ratchets down and costs climb thousands more.
Proponents of Waxman-Markey want you to believe cap-and-trade isn't going to cost more than taking a few people to Disney World for a day; however no amount of econometric sleight-of-hand can make that true.
CAP & TRADE: DAMAGING STEALTH GAS TAX INCREASE
Last year, concern about the highest gas prices in history led to one of the most significant reversals of public opinion in decades, and support emerged for eliminating barriers to petroleum development.
Now the United States Congress is about to approve the Waxman-Markey “cap and trade” bill that would, by the most conservative estimates, increase the price of gasoline by 77 cents per gallon. This would amount to a “stealth” gas tax increase that is more than 2.5 times the average local, state and federal gas tax today.
The $0.77 projection is based upon a Congressional Budget Office (CBO) report that has been promoted as documenting the impact on US consumers. As The Wall Street Journal points out in this morning’s lead editorial, notes that the Congressional Budget Office report on which the $0.77 per gallon increase is limited to the cap and trade program itself and “does not indicate the potential decrease in gross domestic product that could result from the cap.”
In other words, the price of gasoline could rise even more than the $0.77 per gallon calculated from the CBO report. A Heritage Foundation report estimates that the cost of the cap and trade program could reach $1,870 per family of four by 2020 and $6,800 by 2035. Thus is a huge economic hit and cannot help but produce a far less prosperous nation and one with higher levels of poverty.
Waxman-Markey is not only a stealth gas tax increase --- it would put in place mechanisms that would seriously undermine the standard of living.