Out Sourcing Your Tax Dollars

From The Heritage Foundation

The Morning Bell


FRIDAY, AUG 28, 2009


Outsourcing Your Tax Dollars



During a July 7th Senate Environment and Public Works Committee hearing on the 1,500 page Waxman-Markey cap-and-trade legislation, Senator James Inhofe (R-OK) got Environmental Protection Agency administrator Lisa Jackson to admit that “U.S. action alone will not impact CO2 levels.” This is 100% consistent with all the best science which shows that the carbon reductions under Waxman-Markey will not affect global temperatures in any material way. For example a recent study of cap-and-trade by MIT concluded:
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The different U.S. policies have relatively small effects on the CO2 concentration if other regions do not follow the U.S. lead…The Developed Only scenario cuts only about 0.5 °C of the warming from the reference, again illustrating the importance of developing country participation.




As we have asked before, “So how is that ‘developing country participation’ going?” Well, just this week ministers from 10 African countries renewed their intent to demand billions of dollars in aid before they sign any climate agreement and both China and India have also made it crystal clear that they require billions in aid to help finance carbon-reducing projects before they agree to reduce their emissions.

So where are all these billions of dollars going to come from? You, of course. A recently leaked document from the G20 Climate Finance Experts Group refers to “carbon market finance,” as a major source of the “hundreds of billions of dollars per year” delivered to the rest of the world by the U.S. and the other wealthier nations. So what is “carbon market finance?” It’s what Waxman-Markey proponents call cap and trade even though, in reality, all it is a huge new energy tax.

But the story gets even better. Remember all those EPA and CBO estimates purporting to show how little the Waxman-Markey energy tax would hurt consumers? Well, besides the fact that they all ignored the cost of lost GDP from higher energy taxes, the CBO and EPA also assumed that Waxman-Markey would rebate all of its tax proceeds back to consumers. For example, the CBO estimates Waxman-Markey would raise taxes on Americans by $872.8 billion between 2010-2019 but then also assumes that the federal government will immediately turn around and spend $863.8 billion.

In other words, the left in Congress has already spent 100.3% percent of the “carbon market finance” revenues raised. And not a single penny of it has yet been allocated to India, China, and the other developing countries that are demanding cash payments from us before they lift a finger to reduce carbon emissions.

As our economy struggles to recover, our leaders should be working to lower our energy costs and develop our own natural resources, not enacting complex regulatory schemes that will crush our economy and send our hard-earned money overseas.