The party of hot air on taxes and the planet
Image by Tambako the Jaguar via Flickr
Republican Administrations always raise taxes, either directly , as George “Read My Lips” Bush did, or indirectly through deficit spending and debt, as Ronald Reagan and George “Mission Accomplished” Bush did. So Republican claims to guardianship of the American pocketbook are disingenuous at best, sinister at worst.
And their latest ploy shows them at their sinister worst. Republicans in the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee are threatening to boycott the committee’s vote on the climate bill, which would prevent the bill from reaching the Senate floor for a full vote. To advance the bill, the committee needs at least two Republicans present.
The Republicans claim to be concerned that the EPA has not done a thorough enough analysis of the cost of the Senate bill to taxpayers, but delaying the bill would cost taxpayers more, both in staff time at the EPA and in costs associated with global warming.
The committee’s minority chair, Sen. James Inhofe, has complained that Democrats are acting as if “it’s outrageous for us to ask for even two months” of delay. But why two months? Because the UN Climate Conference in Copenhagen will end in just under two months.
A boycott that stalls the bill for two months wouldn’t just slow the American legislative process, it would undermine the worldwide effort to halt global warming. The U.S. may not have a deadline for the bill, but the rest of the planet needs it before December. The U.N. has asked the U.S. to show leadership at Copenhagen, and the Senate bill–weakened as it is by concessions to utilities, oil, coal, Republicans–has to serve as part of the foundation of that leadership.
So what of Republican concerns about the EPA analysis? You’ll find the EPA analysis here (pdf). It estimates the cost of the differences between the Senate bill and the version passed by the House this summer, the American Clean Energy and Security Act. Where the two bills overlap, and they overlap substantially, the EPA uses its analysis from the House bill instead of repeating the same work for the Senate version.
Normally, unduplicated work would be considered a savings for taxpayers.
Related articles by Zemanta
- Help Sen. Inhofe staff his Copenhagen truth squad (trueslant.com)
Post Your Comment
You must be logged in to post a comment
T/S Members
Log in with your True/Slant account.
[...] This post was mentioned on Twitter by Green News Examiner and Gerry Therrien, Tweets Tube. Tweets Tube said: The party of hot air on taxes and the planet http://bit.ly/21puaN [...]
The only thing worse than the tax-and-spend Democrats are the borrow-and-spend Republicans. They claim to believe in the rights of the unborn but think nothing of having saddled them with a massive national debt. Unfortunately, Obama will be taking the fall for them, obligated as he is to mopped up after their orgy. Still, even Obama fails to realize that America needs to go into a permanent recession, needs to reduce its economic activity (at least as we measure it now) by half. Half as many cars, hambugers, airconditioners, airplane trips. We simply need to cut our ecofootprint in half and our carbon foodprint by 80%. I don’t like him using tax money to keep this Hummer running.
[...] are demanding a more thorough economic analysis of the bill by the EPA, a process that appears designed to delay the bill beyond December’s UN Climate Change Conference in [...]