The CEC (Committee on Energy and Commerce) has drafted a bill to send to Congress titled “American Clean Energy and Security Act Of 2009.” “This legislation will create clean energy jobs that can’t be shipped overseas, reduce our dependence on foreign oil, and make America the global leader in energy technology. We will create jobs by the millions, save money by the billions, and unleash energy investment by the trillions,” said Chairman Markey. But will it?
On the surface it sounds like a great idea but the title of the bill is a bit of deceptive marketing. The Bill is the global warming carbon cap and trade legislation President Obama demanded of Congress. Remember the “unleash energy investment by the trillions” part of Markey’s statement as I’m going to show you where the money is coming from and where it will go.
In a nutshell, the Bill establishes an international banking system with 2.5 billion carbon “allocations” or credits as its currency reserve. American companies will need to pay into the banking system to purchase carbon credits in order to consume energy to manufacture products. The bill establishes a “cap” on the amount of energy a company can use. On certain milestone years (starting as early as 2012), the cap will be gradually lowered and companies will need to cut back in energy use to meet the new standards.
The proposed cap and trade policy bases it’s measurements on models which tie industry CO2 output to economic key performance indicators. There is no way to disassociate cap limits from decreased economic productivity in the current CO2 measurement system. There is no method to directly measure how much CO2 a company emits in manufacturing. Therefore, the amount of CO2 a company emits is calculated from the company’s productivity and energy consumption. Companies that use renewable energy in manufacturing will receive credits which will enable them to produce more.
The money will come from taxes (the politically correct term is “allocations”) levied on American businesses initially. However, there is talk in political circles of eventually taxing you for your carbon footprint. The government is considering plans to tax you for living, heating your house, running your air conditioning, driving your car, and even having children. Your home emits CO2, your car emits it, and your children emit it. The products you buy in the store will soon be labeled with a carbon impact value that will determine the amount of carbon they consume and produce over their lifetime. Carbon taxes will be applied to the products in proportion to their impact. The ACESA Bill is the groundbreaking legislation that will establish carbon as a taxable commodity.
Now that we understand where the trillions of dollars is going to come from lets take a look at where it will be spent. At this point, it might be useful to look at the full text version of the Bill. The ACESA Bill’s title says “American Clean Energy...” but under the cover it’s chock full of creating numerous international funds to send money to foreign countries “as determined by the President” [pp 569, line 23].
The section of the Bill titled “Exporting Green Technology” isn’t about exporting American technology. Its stated purpose is “to provide United States assistance” [pp 568, line 21] to developing countries. Later the assistance is described as funds from an International Clean Energy Fund established by the Bill [pp 570, line 10] and paid for by fees levied on U.S. industry. That’s not export; it’s a crafty way to give money taken from U.S. industry and citizens to foreign governments.
If you look at the Bill Summary (this is the document most senators and the public read), you will notice that all of these huge funds being created by the Bill is conveniently not mentioned except in the last sentence on the last page [pp 5]. It’s not referred to as a fund, it’s called a program, glossing over the fact it is U.S. money received from American industry to be distributed to the U.N. and developing nations.
What about the millions of jobs the Bill claims to create? If you’ve already clicked on the link to the full text version above, the ACESA Bill will open up as a PDF document. At the top of the page is a search text box. For fun, type the word “job” or “jobs” in the text box then press your <Enter> key. Notice to the right of where you typed the word, there are forward and backward buttons. Keep clicking the forward button and each time it finds the word, read around that section a little to get the gist of what jobs it is talking about. The word jobs is mentioned in the Bill only five or six times, mostly in reference to how to reeducate people and address the job losses expected to occur when companies that can’t afford the tax go belly up. Nowhere in the bill is any analysis of what jobs will be created!
People really need to read this bill (the full text version) and realize that in supporting it they’re being enticed, through words easy to be heard, to support yet another congressional tax and spend bonanza on the already burdened back of U.S. industry and its citizens to the benefit of fat politicians, the United Nations, and foreign governments. It is a monster tax and spend initiative.
Isn’t it remarkable that a Bill that claims to curb climate change says nothing about it in the title? The summary is carefully crafted to highlight benefits that aren’t in the Bill. At a time when American businesses are struggling to stay afloat, unemployment almost at depression levels, Americans loosing their homes, we don't need Congress bludgeoning America with trillions of dollars in new taxes - er, um, "allocations."