GOP Embraces Cap and Trade–Away The Country’s Future

Yes, they call it something slightly different — and it has a very different goal than the original cap-and-trade:

The Cut, Cap and Balance bill, which President Barack Obama threatened to veto on Monday, would slash funding for government programs, implement spending caps that opponents and supporters have called “draconian” and condition a $2.4 trillion increase in the debt ceiling on congressional approval of a constitutional amendment requiring the federal government to balance its budget. The bill, introduced last Friday, didn’t go through a single legislative committee — a tactic Republicans vowed to avoid.

And that’s how the centrist Politico spins it.

In reality, the bill would permanently destroy the competitiveness of the country — forever gutting efforts to invest in clean energy, reducing oil dependence, R&D of any kind, infrastructure, education, and the like, just as we are struggling to come out of a deep recession.  The bill would make it incredibly difficult to respond to major crises or disasters in the future, like, say, Dust-Bowlification, increasingly devastating extreme weather events, sea level rise, the poisoning of our oceans, and the like.

Let’s call it cap-and-trade-away-the-country’s-future.