Cap and tax: Exposing the charade

The Pittsburgh Tribune-Review says the cap and trade legislation backed by Democrats will cost each American household about $2,000 a year in new energy taxes.

From a recent editorial:

Cap and tax: Exposing the charade

Newly released Treasury Department figures on the cap-and-trade climate bill reveal a potential government windfall of up to $200 billion annually in federal receipts, far in excess of what the Obama administration originally projected.

And that would cost the average American household about $2,000 annually, according to the Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI), which requested the Treasury data from March under the Freedom of Information Act.

The findings sent Gang Green into a frenzy: The data are dated, they say. The cap-and-tax proposal would give away some emission credits (and tilt the field to favored industries). And some revenues from those hefty allowances would be used to -- wait for it -- cut taxes.

If anything at all is certain about government's generalizations for wealth-robbing initiatives, it's that they're notoriously low-balled.

But even more egregious, the legislation passed by the U.S. House is premised on a supposed "need" that doesn't exist. For all their costs and economic injury -- which are facts -- the carbon caps would have no effect on Earth's temperatures, experts say.

It's a charlatan's canard dressed up as a public priority.

"If they don't tell you the cost and they don't tell you the benefit, what are they telling you?" asks CEI's Christopher Horner.

Obviously not much in this era of government "transparency" in which crucial data are withheld, or redacted, until the damage is done.