CBO Lowballs Waxman-Markey Cost

IBD Editorials ^ | July 13, 2009

[Kaslin]

Climate Change: Supporters of economy-killing cap-and-trade legislation not only misquote the Congressional Budget Office's report lowballing the costs. They ignore how CBO cooked the books to get its numbers.

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We have often cited the CBO in our editorials. It's a nonpartisan entity whose staffers normally do a decent job analyzing data and crunching numbers. But as regards the true cost of climate change legislation, they have fallen victim to the computer-age trap: garbage in, garbage out.

In recent weeks, ABC's "This Week" host George Stephanopoulos twice misquoted a CBO analysis of the Waxman-Markey bill that claims that we can save the planet for the price of a postage stamp per day. How this squared with the Obama administration's admission, even promise, that energy costs would "necessarily skyrocket" he did not explain.

The former Clinton adviser twice made the assertion that the cost of Waxman-Markey was only "about $150 a year." His first error was not reading the actual report, which puts the figure at $175.

And that's not every year. The unread report says that's the cost in 2020 after allowing for eight years of transition — not every year in between, for which the true costs are staggering.

The CBO's own numbers do not compute. An earlier June 19 revenue estimate projected that the allowance price — the price to emit carbon dioxide — will be $28 per ton of CO2 in 2020.

[Kaslin]

[steelyourfaith]

 

Beam me to Planet Gore !

[cranked]

The CBO may have, but the GAO did not...
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=GAO+report+on+the+costs+of+Cap+and+Trade&aq=f&oq=&aqi=

[Brellium]

The CBO numbers are higher:

~20 tons of CO2 per household in the US
~28$ per ton
~560$ per household in costs

All assuming that household energy emissions do not decrease or increase.

[Frantzie]

This cap and trade crap will be VERY inflationary. Repubs need to point that out - ENDLESSLY. Seniors will see their electric bills rise. I am already seeing inflation picking up.

[davidlachnicht]