Conservatives are warning that the cap-and-trade bill heading to the Senate for consideration will raise energy costs, increase unemployment, and weaken the economy, if enacted.
The conservative Washington think tank The Heritage Foundation estimates that House-approved legislation limiting greenhouse gas emissions will hit consumers with a 60-percent spike in gasoline prices and a 90-percent increase in electricity prices, after inflation. Eight Republicans joined with Democrats to pass the bill by a narrow seven-vote margin of 219-212. David Kreutzer, a senior policy analyst in energy, economics, and climate change at Heritage, says Congress needs to hear a bigger uproar from taxpayers about the economic impact of the bill. "But we will also find that virtually everything will go up in price because everything uses energy, and energy gets much more expensive. So we find that the impact per household will be, for a family of four, about $3,000 per year for the first 24 years, and that's as far out as we analyzed it," he notes. "The CO2 caps get drawn down lower and lower and lower even beyond that, so the cost will continue to rise." Kreutzer says although the cap-and-trade bill faces tougher sledding in the Senate, President Obama was able to successfully employ "arm-twisting, tradeoffs, and back-room deals" to pass the measure in the House. So Americans "can't rest if they don't want higher energy prices," advises the Heritage analyst.
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