Many Americans find the debate in Washington over adopting a "cap and trade" program to reduce carbon dioxide a bit confusing. That's understandable. Put simply, it's a tax on energy consumption.
In fact, it would be a huge tax. If enacted, cap-and-trade will be one of the government's largest revenue sources within the next decade. It also would break one of President Obama's promises. In his speech before Congress in February, he said,
"If your family earns less than $250,000 a year, you will not see your taxes increased a single dime."
Unless you use energy, apparently.
A new study by Bryan Buckley and Sergey Mityakov of Clemson University found that that the cap-and-trade approach contained in a bill introduced last summer by Sens. Joseph Lieberman, I–Conn., and John Warner, R–Va., would, in effect, hit the average American household with a tax hike of $1,100 in 2008 – a hike that would rise to more than $1,400 in 2015. There goes that "single dime" – and then some... [snip]
So what can we expect from cap–and–trade? A lot of gain (in the form of tax revenue) for the federal government – and a lot of economic pain for the American consumer.
And all for purely hypothetical environmental gains.
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