An Economic Declaration of War


There is a war brewing between liberals on Capitol Hill and the hardworking citizens of the Midwest, notably those of my home state of Indiana.

It comes in the form of an energy proposal known as “cap and trade” which would cap greenhouse gas emissions from regulated entities and require businesses to acquire permits or “allowances” for their emissions. The bill should actually be called “cap and tax” because it basically establishes a national energy tax. Under the guise of protecting the environment, the bill will increase taxes on every American who uses any form of energy and would have a devastating impact on the Indiana economy and Hoosier taxpayers. Washington politicians love it because they can claim that they are taxing polluters when in effect they are actually taxing middle class American families and workers.

The Wall Street Journal recently editorialized about this proposal, noting the unjust burden this proposal would have on the Midwest: “But the greatest inequities are geographic and would be imposed on the parts of the U.S. that rely most on manufacturing or fossil fuels — particularly coal, which generates most power in the Midwest, Southern and Plains states… Coal provides more than half of U.S. electricity, and 25 states get more than 50% of their electricity from conventional coal-fired generation.”

Indiana, in particular, would be one of the hardest hit states in the nation because it gets 94 percent of its energy from fossil fuels.

Let me be clear: cap and tax is a job killer.

With small businesses and factories being forced to cut jobs or close their doors, more Americans will be out of work and unable to support their families. Those few businesses and factories that manage to stay open will only do so by passing their increased energy costs on to consumers.

President Obama himself admitted that the plan will cause energy prices to rise at the expense of the consumer. In an editorial board meeting with the San Francisco Chronicle during the presidential campaign he stated, “Under my plan of a cap and trade system electricity rates would necessarily skyrocket … that will cost money. They will pass that money on to consumers…”

The effect of this massive tax increase will be felt by every American. According to cost analysis of similar cap and tax proposals, the total energy bill for the average American household will increase by more than $3,000 per year. At a time when families across the heartland and across America are hurting, the last thing they need is to be burdened with even more punishing taxes.

As Chairman of the Republican American Energy Solutions Group in the U.S. House, we will be conducting hearings across the country. The purpose of the group is to study and propose ways that we can work together to increase American energy production, encourage greater efficiency and conservation, and promote the use of alternative fuels. Together we can find common ground in our battle for energy independence without placing an additional burden on American consumers.


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What can you all do to STOP IT? WE here know...

JadedByPolitics (Diary) Thursday, April 23rd at 3:08PM EST (link)

it’s bad for America but how do you get the message out to kill the cap and trade bill? BTW thanks for being a great Republican…they are far and few between!

Everyone knows how to increase domestic energy sources

Beaglescout (Diary) Thursday, April 23rd at 4:06PM EST (link)

You have to remove the controls on drilling, open up ANWR, open up the OCS, short circuit environmental nuisance lawsuits, open up Yucca Mountain, restart the nuclear construction process, open up the oil shale fields in the Dakotas and Montana, develop low pollution coal technologies, and debunk the anthropogenic global warming lies. What hearings are necessary, other than hearings that definitively hang each and every one of these obstacles to Real Energy Independence around the necks of the Democrat Party like the ball and chain it should be?

You’re being too nice to them. They have declared war on Republicans. It’s time for Republicans to fight back, not to hold hearings.

“A nation which can prefer disgrace to danger is prepared for a master, and deserves one.”

–Alexander Hamilton

Would be nice to see OUR Rep's in front of the cameras...

JadedByPolitics (Diary) Thursday, April 23rd at 4:35PM EST (link)

like the Dems did the whole last 4 of Bush’s years BUT NO they don’t have the guts to FORCE the media to give them equal time!

Talk is cheap, Rep. Pence...

DONTREADONME (Diary) Thursday, April 23rd at 8:18PM EST (link)

DO SOMETHING! I am sick of seeing these platitudes. People like us sit around here daily and we hear zero from the Republicans, and wall to wall Zer0bama. It seems like it is the people here at Redstate and Fox news are the only people getting the message out.

The Democrats seem to have no problem being heard during the Bush years, SPEAK LOUDLY and CARRY A BIG STICK from now on!

 
 
 
 

And while you're conducting hearings, the

Steph C (Diary) Thursday, April 23rd at 3:22PM EST (link)

Democratic majority will go ahead and legislate cap and trade, anyway.

Sorry, sir, but it’s time to take the gloves off. Stop playing the game by their rules since you nor we had any input in the writing of them.

“[I]f the public are bound to yield obedience to laws to which they cannot give their approbation, they are slaves to those who make such laws and enforce them.” –Candidus in the Boston Gazette, 1772
Hillbilly Politics

 

And so, exactly WHAT are you and the Republican Leadership going to DO about it? nt

mbecker908 (Diary) Thursday, April 23rd at 3:33PM EST (link)

We have been Updated..

speciallist (Diary) Thursday, April 23rd at 4:50PM EST (link)
 

I feel the same way we have to dispute obama lies across the media

bobojake (Diary) Thursday, April 23rd at 3:37PM EST (link)

obama you are so full of elcrapo with your incompetence. ask a farmer or any body in history that had to depend on windmills for their water(many towns did) and you want us to depends on windmills and solar on 100 degrees day.
are you obama going in the casket business???????

We need to build nuclear palnts
because obamas-peloski-reid craps and shove foney fraud carbon tax will
double the cost of food,
double the cost of electricity,
double the cost of gasoline,
double the cost of home heating fuels,
double the cost of consumers goods,
the democrats don’t seem to understand just because you don’t call it a tax, if the hard working middle class taxpayers have to use their disposble income to pay for increased living costs it a gd tax.
dump the democrats today .
We CAN NOT AFFORD OBAMAS CRAPS AND SHOVE FONEY FRAUD CARBON TAX. PERIOD

 

Crap & Trade your future is more like it

izoneguy (Diary) Thursday, April 23rd at 3:50PM EST (link)

Our side must run TV spots to get the message out….

Even try to run them on CNN and NBC – who knows they might need the money.

It won’t just effect Americans – this will have a ripple impact in the rest of the world. $3000 to a family is alot of money. Money that won’t be used to buy foreign goods. Money that won’t be spent on a family vacation overseas.

Crap & Trade does NOT work:

http://www.ncpa.org/sub/dpd/index.php?Article_ID=14411

EUROPE’S “CAP AND TRADE” PROBLEMS

As U.S. lawmakers work on the details of “cap and trade” carbon dioxide legislation, they need to know what Europeans already know: When trying to slow down global warming, beware of unintended consequences, says Steven Mufson in the Washington Post.

Consider Kollo Holding’s (a silicon carbide maker) factory in the Netherlands:

Managers at the factory say their plant as an ecological standout: They use waste gases to generate energy and have installed the latest pollution-control equipment.

But Europe’s emissions program has driven electricity prices so high that the facility routinely shuts down for part of the day to save money on power, which, contrary to environmental goals, reduces energy efficiency.

Although demand for its products is strong, the plant has laid off 40 of its 130 employees and trimmed production.

Two customers have turned to cheaper imports from China, which is not covered by Europe’s costly regulations.
They aren’t the only ones suffering, says Mufson. French cement workers fear they’re going to lose jobs to Morocco, which doesn’t have to meet the European guidelines; and German homeowners pay 25 percent more for electricity than they did before the caps.

Making matters worse, the rationing hasn’t proved successful, says Mufson:

Because of lobbying by well-connected companies, the EU’s limits on emissions ended up being higher than the actual emissions.
As a result, fewer companies than expected had to buy emissions this year, and the price of carbon allowances, which had topped $30 per ton of carbon about a year ago, crashed to about $1 a ton.

Germany boasts that it has cut emissions to 18.4 percent below 1990 levels, but nearly half the reduction was because of sagging industrial output in the former East Germany after reunification.
For the 2008-2012 period, European Union officials sliced 5 percent off Germany’s emissions proposal.

Source: Steven Mufson, “Europe’s Problems Color U.S. Plans to Curb Carbon Gases,” Washington Post, April 9, 2007.

The point cannot be made often enough: Modern liberalism, as embodied in the Obama presidency, is the defender of the status quo. And the status quo is a road to economic ruin. Political forces cannot redistribute the wealth that the economic system does not produce.

 

Congressman Pence...thank you for your leadership...

Aaron Gardner (Diary) Thursday, April 23rd at 3:52PM EST (link)

With that said…Hearings?? Really?? That is what you are going to do.

Let me ask you this…if a tree falls in the forest and nobody is there to hear it…does it make a sound?

The liberals will not be swayed by logic Sir…that is very clear. The only thing that will change these peoples minds is the belief that it will cost them their seat. The way to make that happen is to attack and expose these idiots on their own turf…in the MSM…we here at RedState get it…we have been talking about the Cap and Trade bull for over 2 years.

What we need is some Lee Atwaters to tear these idiots a new…well you get the picture I am sure.

conform and celebrate diversity….or else!!!

“We’d be much better off if We The People had desired small government enough to keep it.” acat


 

Lucky for us only the rich will have to pay for it

bk (Diary) Thursday, April 23rd at 4:09PM EST (link)

Wait, isn’t that the idea? All us poor and middle class folks are ready to spend our tax cuts. Am I missing something? (heh heh)

 

The Great Democratic Experiments

ObamaNo Thursday, April 23rd at 4:33PM EST (link)

I don’t know about the rest of you, but I am sick and tired of the American people being treated as crash test dummies and animals used for drug testing by the democrats.

Has anyone else noticed that the democrats seem to come up with all these pie-in-the-sky ideas to solve problems that aren’t really problems at all? Then, when they try to implement them, they cause even MORE problems which the same idiots try to correct but are totally incapable of doing. Yet, they don’t suffer – the American people do. The things this administration is trying to do in such a short period of time will lead to permanent financial damage to people – just for some great experiment.

Cap and trade, global warming, housing bailouts, bank bailouts, non-tax paying cabinet members, and a president who appears to be a whole lot better at spending other people’s money than his own is a disgrace.

My husband and I have worked hard and lived responsibly to take care of ourselves and save for our futures. All of that is at risk because of politicians, and yes, mostly democrats.

they do that to the poor too

mom2oneson (Diary) Thursday, April 23rd at 4:44PM EST (link)

There are all kinds of socail/educational type stuff they do, same idea!!! They make up problems and stuff, you so hit the nail on the head.

 
 

Thank you Rep. Pence - Do what you can to stop this.

Brian Hibbert (Diary) Thursday, April 23rd at 4:34PM EST (link)

I’m not sure what other tools you have at your disposal, but please use ALL of them to stop this.

The hearings, if publicized enough should help get the public behind you, but I fear that isn’t enough to stop it.

Candidate for Trustee of Illinois Central College
Socialism doesn’t work. It looks nice on paper, but it’s been tried and it’s failed miserably every time (usually accompanied by widespread death and suffering).
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Take back our party!
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You all can sweep the 2010 elections if you go FULL BORE on this....

JadedByPolitics (Diary) Thursday, April 23rd at 5:33PM EST (link)

This is THE ISSUE that will KILL the bluedogs….DO IT!

 

So I'm suppose to care about the cost of living in the Midwest?

garbear Thursday, April 23rd at 8:25PM EST (link)

Who did Indiana, Iowa, Illinois, Wisconsin, Ohio, Michigan, and Minnesota–those “great” states of the Midwest–vote to send to the White House? Are the majority of their senators liberal or conservative? Are the majority of their Congressmen liberal or conservative? If folks in the Midwest get hammered with cap and trade so what? THEY VOTED FOR IT! Serves ‘em right. I say let them find out that votes have consequences

States held hostage by economic make-up

JLenardDetroit (Diary) Thursday, April 23rd at 8:36PM EST (link)

some of those other States are like MI where just a handful of Counties vote in such huge Liberal numbers as to over-ride the will of the rest of their State and force/impose Federal (and often Governor) Liberalism… Michigan has been that way for the last decade or so…. I briefly go over that in Exporting/Expanding BLUE-ism…. Unfortunately the whole State, and now by extension of their pathetic inability to learn the rest of the country, has to suffer because of them. I guess Democrats/Liberals want the entire country to turn into the Deterioration Capital of the World: Detroit (new moniker, the NoMoTown).

Regards from NoMoTown (the MOTORlessCITY)
“Liberals, looking to do for? America what they’ve done for? Detroit! which is DESTROY IT!”
“I think, therefore I am Conservative”
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“You can lead a Liberal to the Truth/Facts, but you cannot make them THINK!”
“Romney [No, not my first choice] does NOT have a MORMON problem. He has a, far too many Americans; these days; are MORONS problem!”


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