Just hours after Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) floated the notion that cap-and-trade bill MAY wait till 2010, a top aide unfloated it, as E&E News (subs. req’d) reports today:
Jim Manley, a Reid spokesman, insisted last night that “no decisions have been made” on floor timing for a comprehensive climate and energy bill. “We still intend to deal with health care, [Wall Street regulatory] reform and cap and trade this year,” Manley added in an e-mail.
Again, it’s probably 50-50 at this point with the bill is voted on this year.
The story also has news on the progress Sens. Barbara Boxer (D-CA) and John Kerry (D-MA) are making putting together their draft bill:
Boxer and Kerry had originally planned to release a draft cap-and-trade bill last week, but they punted on that schedule to continue negotiations with other senators over unfinished pieces to their proposal.
Yesterday, Kerry, the chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said he and Boxer still plan to get the draft legislation out by Sept. 30. “We have a mental deadline,” Kerry said. “We are aiming for this month.”
The climate bill authors are “making great progress” as they meet with other senators to map out key features of the bill, Kerry added. “We are going to be working very, very hard, almost every night over the next two weeks,” he said.
Kerry said he plans to hold a markup in the Foreign Relations Committee in October. Boxer said she too remains on schedule for passing the legislation out of her Environment and Public Works Committee next month. “The feeling is that it’s moving in our direction,” she said.
And conservatives remain, well, conservatives:
Sen. Robert Bennett (R-Utah) said he doubts a climate bill can lead to any positive results. “What do we get in terms of actual economic benefit from controlling greenhouse gas emissions?” he asked.
Hmm, other than creating 1.7 million clean energy jobs and not ruining the health and well-being of the next 50 generations — what benefit is there, really? (see “Waxman-Markey clean air, clean water, clean energy jobs bill creates $1.5 trillion in benefits“)
Previous in TP Climate Progress
The Obama administration has privately concluded that a cap and trade law would cost American taxpayers up to $200 billion a year, the equivalent of hiking personal income taxes by about 15 percent.
A previously unreleased analysis prepared by the U.S. Department of Treasury says the total in new taxes would be between $100 billion to $200 billion a year. At the upper end of the administration’s estimate, the cost per American household would be an extra $1,761 a year.
cbs news
[JR: Not. This was not a model of the climate bill that passed the House.]
Those “private” cost figures are grossly exaggerated, but even if they were true, the question would be:
Are you willing to pay $650 per year now, so your children and the fifty generations that follow won’t have to lose many thousands of dollars per year because of global warming?
Note that Americans spend about $7,000 per year on each car they own. Would you refuse to spend a small fraction of that to preserve a livable world for future generations?
Re #1:
That “cbsnews” source is actually Declan McCullagh’s opinion blog.
“given the Administration’s proposal to auction all emission allowances, a cap and trade program could generature federal receipts on the order of $100 to $200 billion annually.”
…from the document is translated by McCullagh to…
“the U.S. Department of Treasury says the total in new taxes would be between $100 billion to $200 billion a year.”
Charles Siegel has it right I would say, and his point applies frequently when opposition to action against climate change tries to invent some financial justification to do nothing. Even though the claim is inaccurate, the cost if it was true would still figure to be less than that of inaction and unabated warming, as Joe says, Hell and High Water.
When are people going to realize this is an emergency? This is worse than WWII. Compare the small cost of cap & trade (if it really is a cost), to the rationing and restrictions that people accepted during WWII. Maybe a Pearl Harbor event will bring people to their senses, but then it might be too late, if it isn’t already.