Facts about
Lieberman-Warner Energy-Rationing Bill,
S. 2191/S. 3036
Lieberman-Warner = a tax.
Cap-and-trade
can only work by raising the price of lower-priced hydrocarbon
fuels, so that people are forced either to use higher-priced
alternatives or to use less energy. Even worse, it's hidden
tax. Voting for higher taxes can lead to election defeats, but
cap-and-trade makes it much harder for consumers to know that their
elected officials are to blame for rising energy prices. In a
report released last April, the Congressional Budget Office says
that 'most of the cost of meeting a cap on CO2
emissions would be borne by consumers, who would face
persistently higher prices for products such as electricity and
gasoline.'
Lieberman-Warner = a wealth transfer scheme.
The primary
purpose of cap-and-trade is not to reduce greenhouse gas emissions,
but to transfer wealth from consumers to politically-powerful
special interests. That's why so many big companies support
cap-and-trade. In fact, higher energy costs will hit poor people
the hardest, since they spend a larger share of income on
energy.
Lieberman-Warner = big government central planning.
Lieberman-Warner puts the federal government in charge of
deciding how much energy Americans can use. It would create new
boards and agencies with enormous and ill-defined powers and would
require huge new bureaucracies to administer all the red tape. The
ethanol mandates of 2005 and 2007 are showing once again the
disastrous effects of even just a little central
planning.
Lieberman-Warner = Open to Political Favoritism and
Corruption.
It's no
coincidence that the biggest promoter of cap-and-trade until its
demise was the Enron Corporation.
Lieberman-Warner = The Most Ineffective and Expensive Way to
Address Potential Global Warming.
The European Union's Emissions
Trading Scheme is proving horrendously expensive and unpopular but
is actually doing little to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. See
Open Europe's analysis, 'Europe's Dirty Secret: Why
the EU ETS Isn't Working', at
openeurope.org.uk.
