McCaskill should join effort to put EPA in its place.
BY DAN SHAUL AND PHIL KERPEN
President Barack Obama’s cap-and-trade energy tax — designed, according to Obama himself, to make electricity prices “necessarily skyrocket” — went down in flames in the Senate last year and was emphatically buried in the midterm elections.
Unfortunately, the day after the election, Obama made clear he would ignore the election and push forward. He said: “Cap-and-trade was just one way of skinning the cat; it was not the only way. It was a means, not an end.”
Obama’s budget showed what he meant. His budget for the Environmental Protection Agency says: “The Administration continues to support greenhouse gas emissions reductions in the United States in the range of 17 percent below 2005 levels by 2020 and 83 percent by 2050.” Those just happen to be the same levels required by the failed cap-and-trade bill. In other words, Obama is telling the EPA to just pretend the bill passed and regulate away.
Fortunately, the Senate is slated to vote on stopping the EPA soon. It will take 60 votes, and Sen. Claire McCaskill could hold the key to success. Recall what cap-and-trade-like emissions reductions mean for Missouri.
An analysis conducted by the forecasting firm SAIC and commissioned by the American Council on Capital Formation projected the economic impact of last year’s version of cap-and-trade for Missouri. It found we would have: 43,300 to 58,900 fewer jobs, $793 to $1,301 in lower annual disposable income per household, an annual hit to the Missouri economy of between $6.7 billion and $9.2 billion and much higher energy prices — 19 percent to 24 percent higher for gasoline and 29 percent to 64 percent higher for electricity. The study also found lower-income families — people who are least able to absorb higher energy costs — will be the hardest hit.
This affects everyone, from the grocery store to the corner merchant, more than most consider. Imagine gas prices increased for the farmer’s tractor growing our food, fuel costs skyrocketing for the trucker who delivers groceries to your corner market and energy prices increased for the store owner to light the aisle and cool the milk. Every time costs are increased, those costs must be incorporated into the price of products on the shelves paid by you and me — the consumers. (Columbia Daily Tribune)
