Beam me to Planet Gore !
Posted on 03/19/2009 6:07:06 AM PDT by SeekAndFind
President Obama’s energy tax plan -- a version of the failed European “cap and trade” global warming fiasco -- may cost families $1,800 yearly in higher utility bills, far exceeding his promised $800 a year tax cut for 95% of Americans.
While campaigning, Obama admitted that his energy plan would cause electric bills to “skyrocket.” Few took note, perhaps because Sen. John McCain also backed some form of a “cap-and-trade” energy tax.
Obama’s official budget claims that his proposed energy tax would add $646 billion to energy costs over 8 years. But that’s low-balling it.
As the Washington Times reported:
President Obama's climate plan could cost industry close to $2 trillion, nearly three times the White House's initial estimate of the so-called "cap-and-trade" legislation, according to Senate staffers who were briefed by the White House. . . . At the meeting, Jason Furman, a top Obama staffer, estimated that the president's cap-and-trade program could cost up to three times as much as the administration's early estimate of $646 billion over eight years.
Put another way, Furman estimates the cap-and-trade scheme will cost, on average, $250 billion annually. That estimate must be taken seriously because Furman is deputy director of Obama’s National Economic Council.
So what does this mean to everyday Americans? Let’s put those numbers into context.
Total electricity sales (business and residential combined) run about $343 billion a year (according to 2007 Department of Energy figures). Throw in our other energy expenses -- gasoline, natural gas, etc. -- and the U.S. Department of Energy estimates our total energy spending at “over $500 billion.”
So Obama’s $250-billion a year energy tax could approach a 50% increase in what you, as a consumer, pay for energy, since all costs are passed along to consumers. Yet the Obama budget audaciously claims that it will “reduce utility bills”
According to the White Fence Index, the average home utility bill is $297 per month, which is about $3,600 per year. So a 50% increase would be $1,800 per year under the Obama proposal. This far exceeds a Heritage Foundation projection of $467 a year in higher utility bills under an earlier U.S. Senate energy tax plan. That less-aggressive plan, though, could have cost 500,000 to 1 million jobs, according to Heritage. Who knows how many jobs would be lost under Obama’s more burdensome plan? The lost jobs would become “gangrene jobs,” a counter to Obama’s claim to create new “green jobs.”
The White House and Mr. Furman try to justify drastically higher energy costs by offsetting it with their plan to give 95% of American families a permanent $800 per year “Making Work Pay” tax credit. (42% of that “tax cut” would actually go to people who don’t pay any income tax.) But even with the $800 subsidy, the net loss is $1,000 per family per year.
Obama also proposes to use the new energy tax to subsidize “green energy” technologies. The idea is to replace affordable nuclear and fossil energy sources with (far more expensive) renewal energy. Replacing cheap power with expensive power will raise energy costs even above the increase attributable to Obama’s energy tax.
Obama and his allies justify it all by claiming it’s necessary to save the planet from man-made global warming, even though the Earth for many years has been cooling instead.
A recent Gallup poll found a record-high 41% of Americans now believe mainstream media exaggerate global warming dangers in their reporting. They are not alone.
The ranks of skeptics keep expanding among the experts as well. More than 800 experts who are dubious about environmental alarmism attended this month’s International Conference on Climate Change. That group so far has gathered signatures of more than 31,072 American scientists who endorse this conclusion: "There is no convincing scientific evidence that human release of carbon dioxide, methane, or other greenhouse gases is causing or will, in the foreseeable future, cause catastrophic heating of the Earth's atmosphere and disruption of the Earth's climate.”
Yet President Obama and his political allies in Congress are pushing aggressively for climate change legislation as a centerpiece of their agenda.
Americans angered by the big-spending liberal bent in Washington are already organizing tea parties in protest. In addition to making teabags the symbol of protest, perhaps thermometers should be included as well. Slogans such as, “Hands Off My Guns” may be replaced by “Hands Off My Thermostat.”
Nevertheless, one major man-made threat of global warming should never be overlooked -- the quantity of hot air being emitted in Washington, DC.
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Ernest Istook calls himself a "recovering Congressman" from Oklahoma. He is now a Distinguished Fellow at The Heritage Foundation and chairs the National Advisory Board for Save Our Secret Ballot, www.SOSballot.org.
Call it what it is theft.
FUBO
McCain was such a lousy candidate. We can see what Obama is like -- we need to recall that McCain pretty much ran a campaign declaring "I'm just like Obama!" Which is pretty darn scary.
I never tire of pointing out an exchange in one of the early presidential debates. Obama was asked for specific areas where he would cut the budget. His (paraphrased) response: "We do need to cut the budget, and I will. I will cut the budget by investing in roads and bridges. I will invest in health care and education. I will invest in green technology."
Then they asked McCain where he would cut the budget. His answer: "Defense".
What do Zero supporters care? They live in public housing where you and I foot the bill anyway.
Just another example of how a RINO destroys Conservatives.
McNuts = Zero lite
Obama campained on all of the things he is doing. He was very up front about it. The MSM just did not report it.
McCain had to be THE WORST candidate in the bunch. He couldn’t distinguish himself from the zero in one significant way. Not on energy, not on government waste, not on anything other than the WOT in Iraq which was winding down anyway.
I don’t know about liberals, but if my power bill goes from $250-300 a month to $400-450 a month, that would be a MAJOR problem for my budget. But of course, the zero must “save the planet from glo-bull warming, even though the planet stopped warming in 1998.
I remember a time I think when Carter was POTUS when people were borrowing on their life insurance policies to pay the electric bills. Remember the gas lines. I am not even going to tell you the outrageous electric bill I pay. I am supposed to be on this plan and I haven’t seen dime one in savings. As far as I can tell; they went up.
Is this really what we want to go back to?
I cannot post what I’m thinking about this Marxist without getting banned.
Yes McCain was the worst of the Republican candidates, that is the reason he was championed early on during the primaries by the media. The main stream media picked him for us and stupid Republicans with the help of democrat traitors voted for him in the early primary states. I never even cast a primary vote because by the time Texas got to vote it was all over and we had McCain.
FUBO is taking on an alternative meaning. It more accurately stands for “Effed Up By Obama” than “FU Barack Obama”. Everything in our nation is now FUBO.
This is to be CRAMMED DOWN OUR THROATS .... AS SOON AS POSSIBLE, by any means available.
Jason Furman
Jason Furman (born 1970) is an economist and influential policy intellectual. On January 28, 2009, Furman was named Deputy Director of the National Economic Council in the administration of President Barack Obama, whom he’d been advising since the latter stages of the 2008 presidential campaign. Although he generally works with Democrats, he is reported by the Capitol Hill newspaper Roll Call to be widely respected by Republicans, as well.[1][2]
Furman’s research and policy focus includes the subjects of taxes, health care and the U.S. Social Security program. Furman’s qualified defense of Wal-Mart’s business model provoked criticism from some labor organizations when he joined Obama’s 2008 campaign. But notable liberals defended Furman, praising his staunch defense of Social Security, his criticism of inequality, and advocacy of universal health insurance.[3]
In 1996, while he was a graduate student at Harvard, Furman was hired by economist Joseph Stiglitz to serve for a one-year stint as Special Assistant to the President for Economic Policy in the Clinton Administration and on staff of the Council of Economic Advisers. He later worked with Stiglitz at the World Bank. Furman was involved in varying degrees with the Presidental campaigns of Al Gore and General Wesley Clark. In 2004, he took a position as Director of Economic Policy for the John Kerry Presidential campaign in 2004.
Furman received his MSc from the London School of Economics and a Ph.D. in economics from Harvard University. He has worked together with former Clinton Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin.
In recent years, Furman has worked as a budget expert at the Brookings Institution. There, he directed the Hamilton Project, an economic policy research group that develops policy proposals to achieve shared economic growth.[4]
He is still listed as a Visiting Scholar at New York University’s Wagner Graduate School of Public Service.[5] He has been a visiting lecturer at Columbia and Yale Universities.
Furman is often parodied on the Glenn Beck Program as Obama advisor “Honkey Whitesville,” a recurring call-in guest portrayed by Steve Burguiere.
Why is that a problem?
All you gotta do is go tell your employer you need more money.
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