« Eighteen women in UK diagnosed with breast cancer after faulty screening | Main | Another ACORN video drops tomorrow at 930am EST (Updated) »

October 21, 2009

The Democrats' hidden gas tax of $1 per gallon

Topics: Political News and commentaries

Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison and Sen. Christopher S. Bond are warning that there's something the Democratic lawmakers who are pushing the Waxman-Markey cap-and-trade bill through Congress don't want the public to know. The controversial climate-change legislation winding will impose a massive new national gas tax of a projected $1 per gallon on the American people.

Here's an excerpt from their piece at The Washington Times:

[...] We discovered this by analyzing what the Waxman-Markey cap-and-trade bill would do to gas prices and what Americans spend on gasoline, diesel and jet fuels. We found that cap-and-trade legislation will levy a $3.6 trillion gas-tax increase that will impact every American and important segments of our economy.

The goal of this climate-change legislation is actually to increase the price of traditional forms of carbon-based energy such as coal, gas and oil so that consumers will respond by using less of it. Some lawmakers call this "setting the price on carbon." Economists refer to this kind of policy as a price signal. But the bottom line is that the price of energy will go up. Ultimately, all Americans will pay directly or indirectly for the higher fuel prices the cap-and-trade legislation will cause.

Americans travel more than 200 million vehicle miles each month, and annually we spend nearly $1.2 trillion on gasoline and oil. The average household spends 5 percent of its annual budget on fuel. For many, gasoline is a mandatory expense. And this legislation disproportionately hits middle and lower income households that tend to have longer commutes to work and must drive in order to work. These families will be hit especially hard by the projected $1 per gallon increase for the additional gas tax the cap-and-trade legislation will bring. (More)

As the two senators point out in their piece, the Waxman-Markey and Kerry-Boxer bills need to be prevented from ever becoming law. We can improve the environment and economy through American ingenuity and technological advancement, not with taxes and mandates that increase costs and burden American families and businesses.

Aside from the fact that a gas tax will not only damage the economy and cause a significant hardship on American families, most of whom are now struggling to get by, serious doubt has been cast on the ability of a cap-and-trade system to keep energy affordable and our economy strong while still achieving substantive emission reductions. As Senator Lisa Murkowski has pointed out and Senators Hutchison and Bond suggest in their piece, other policy options -- a tax on carbon, massive investment in advancing clean energy technology, even geo-engineering -- have largely been ignored.

Here's a related video to help answer the question: Cap and Trade: Will It Save the Earth?

Here's a couple of excellent videos by a former GE executive that bring clarity to the consequences of cap and trade legislation:

And here's a must-watch Fox News video on global warming: EPA Supresses EPA Scientist Carlin's Report About The Global Warming Nonsense And The Cap-And-Trade.

Posted by Richard at October 21, 2009 5:04 AM

Articles Related to Political News and commentaries:

• The Democrats' hidden gas tax of $1 per gallon - Oct 21, 2009