myerstownherald.com

The cap and trade environmental bill recently passed by the House of Representatives must go down to defeat in the Senate. This bill is simply another effort put forth by President Obama to enact a utopian leftist agenda, and in the meantime siphon off money from taxpayers and businesses. The Senate, even though controlled by a 60 to 40 margin by Democrats, should reject this monstrous piece of legislation.
The exact dimensions of this bill are difficult to grasp. Obama said it will help create green jobs. Critics say the bill could cost as much as $2 trillion and will result in rising energy costs to both businesses and consumers. Businesses and consumers are looking at higher energy costs because of the tax that this bill places on traditional sources of energy.
The bill would create higher costs because the government would monitor the carbon emissions given off by businesses, and they only would be allowed to emit a certain amount, or else they would have to pay more for the energy. These costs would be passed along to consumers, who will face higher heating bills and other costs.
The objective of this bill is to stop global pollution, rescue the environment and encourage people to use more eco friendly forms of energy production, such as windmills and solar panels. These goals are fine, but placing massive financial burdens on businesses and consumers is not the way to achieve them.
If windmills and solar panels were great and economical ways to harness energy, they would have been in widespread use long ago. The fact is that they are not practical on a wide scale, and if the private sector is forced to adopt them or pay higher taxes to use oil and coal, the result will be a burdened economy.
Adopting a bill of this magnitude also requires believing that global warming is an overwhelming crisis that must be confronted immediately. But consensus is far from settled on this issue. To stake the country’s entire economic fortunes on something that cannot be proven conclusively could prove disastrous.
Gambling on global warming and a bunch of uneconomical technologies, while effectively taxing the use of energy and hurting our economy, does not make sense. Obama frequently decried companies moving overseas during the presidential campaign. Regulations such as the cap and trade bill only will make this problem worse, however. The harder politicians make it on companies to do business in the United States, the more jobs that are likely to be lost. Although the cap and trade bill is hundreds of pages long, it can be summed up rather easily: higher taxes and fewer jobs.
This environmental bill is the latest in a series of big-spending, big government control initiatives that Obama has backed. These measures threaten to make the economy worse than it is. Even though it is controlled by Democrats, the Senate is the last hope for defeating what is an ill conceived bill.