The Biggest Pork Bill Ever!

In today's Wall Street Journal, Senator James Inhofe (R-OK) reveals that the Senate is considering the biggest pork bill in the history of the nation.

We Don't Need a Climate Tax on the Poor

By JAMES INHOFE

With average gas prices across the country approaching $4 a gallon, it may be hard to believe, but the U.S. Senate is considering legislation this week that will further drive up the cost at the pump.

The Senate is debating a global warming bill that will create the largest expansion of the federal government since FDR's New Deal, complete with a brand new, unelected bureaucracy. The Lieberman-Warner bill (America's Climate Security Act) represents the largest tax increase in U.S. history and the biggest pork bill ever contemplated with trillions of dollars in giveaways. Well-heeled lobbyists are already plotting how to divide up the federal largesse. The handouts offered by the sponsors of this bill come straight from the pockets of families and workers in the form of lost jobs, higher gas, power and heating bills, and more expensive consumer goods.

Various analyses show that Lieberman-Warner would result in higher prices at the gas pump, between 41 cents and $1 per gallon by 2030. The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) says Lieberman-Warner would effectively raise taxes on Americans by more than $1 trillion over the next 10 years. The federal Energy Information Administration says the bill would result in a 9.5% drop in manufacturing output and higher energy costs.

Carbon caps will have an especially harmful impact on low-income Americans and those with fixed incomes. A recent CBO report found: "Most of the cost of meeting a cap on CO2 emissions would be borne by consumers, who would face persistently higher prices for products such as electricity and gasoline. Those price increases would be regressive in that poorer households would bear a larger burden relative to their income than wealthier households."

The poor already face energy costs as a much higher percentage of their income than wealthier Americans. While most Americans spend about 4% of their monthly budget on heating their homes or other energy needs, the poorest fifth of Americans spend 19%. A 2006 survey of Colorado homeless families with children found that high energy bills were cited as one of the two main reasons they became homeless.

Lieberman-Warner will also hinder U.S. competitiveness, transferring American jobs overseas to places where environmental regulations are much more lenient. Instead of working to eliminate trade barriers on clean energy and lower emitting technologies, the bill imposes a "green," tariff-style tax on imported goods. This could provoke international retaliatory actions by our trade partners, threatening our own export markets and further driving up the costs of consumer goods.

My colleague, Sen. George Voinovich (R., Ohio), warned last week that Lieberman-Warner "could result in the most massive bureaucratic intrusion into the lives of Americans since the creation of the Internal Revenue Service." Mandating burdensome new layers of federal bureaucracy is not the solution to America's energy challenges.

This bill is ultimately about certainty. We are certain of the huge negative impact on the economy as detailed by numerous government and private analyses. We are certain of the massive expansion of the federal bureaucracy.

And we are certain the bill will not have a detectable impact on the climate. According to the Environmental Protection Agency's own analysis, by 2050 Lieberman-Warner would only lower global CO2 concentrations by less than 1.4% without additional international action. In fact, this bill, often touted as an "insurance policy" against global warming, is instead all economic pain for no climate gain.

Why are many in Washington proposing a bill that will do so much economic harm? The answer is simple. The American people are being asked to pay significantly more for energy merely so some lawmakers in Washington can say they did something about global warming.

I have been battling global warming alarmism since 2003, when I became chairman of the Environment and Public Works Committee. It has been a lonely battle at times, but it now appears that many of my colleagues are waking up to the reality of cap-and-trade legislation.

The better way forward is an energy policy that emphasizes technology and includes developing nations such as China and India. Tomorrow's energy mix must include more natural gas, wind and geothermal, but it must also include oil, coal and nuclear power, which is the world's largest source of emission-free energy. Developing and expanding domestic energy sources will translate into energy security and ensure stable supplies and well-paying jobs for Americans.

Let me end with a challenge to my colleagues. Will you dare stand on the Senate floor in these uncertain economic times and vote in favor of significantly increasing the price of gas at the pump, losing millions of American jobs, creating a huge new bureaucracy and raising taxes by record amounts? The American people deserve and expect a full debate on this legislation.

Mr. Inhofe, a Republican senator from Oklahoma, is ranking member of the Environment and Public Works Committee.

BUSH SELLS OUT AMERICA AT UN CONFERENCE

By Cliff Kincaid

Our national "news" programs have been preoccupied with baseball players on steroids, but they should devote some attention to the Bush Administration's approval of a plan to put the United Nations on steroids. Apparently looking to leave office with the blessings of the "international community," the Bush Administration just sold out American interests at the U.N. Climate Change Conference in Bali, Indonesia.

Official conference documents speak of “a new global deal” by 2013, under which the U.S. dramatically reduces its greenhouse gas emissions under international supervision and transfers more money and technology to other countries. Marc Morano, who works for Senator James Inhofe and provides information that the U.S. media will not give to the American people, notes in a dispatch that the Bali conference featured a panel discussion of a global carbon tax to force U.S. taxpayers to cough up the money. An official U.N. report (PDF) prepared for Bali speaks of “a need for new and additional external sources of funds.” That’s U.N.-speak for global taxes. This is actually an old story I have been following for years. You can read more at my www.stopglobaltaxes.org website.

In a related matter, the Medical Journal of Australia has published an article advocating a carbon tax on a family having more than two children because every baby “represents a potent source of greenhouse gas emissions…” The author, a medical doctor, says that, as “citizens of the world,” populations need to be controlled “to ensure the survival of the environment.” He suggests “carbon credits” for those who are sterilized so they can’t have children.

This is where the global warming crusade is leading: an emerging world government with control over the most intimate details of our personal and family lives.

In addition to putting his stamp of approval on this suicidal course, President Bush is pushing the dangerous U.N. Law of the Sea Treaty, which establishes another independent revenue stream for the U.N. Never mind that the evidence shows that the treaty’s International Seabed Authority is as corrupt as any other U.N. bureaucracy.

So the President who doesn’t want to raise domestic taxes on the American people will leave a legacy of global taxes.

“The United States joins the consensus Decision of the Conference of the Parties in Bali that is a critical first step in assuring that the U.N. negotiation process moves forward toward a comprehensive and effective post-2012 arrangement,” declared the Bush White House press secretary in a statement released on Saturday. This is bureaucratic jargon for letting the United Nations and the rest of the world decide the fate of the U.S. economy.

It was a story the media had to cover in some form. The U.S. “concession” at the end of the conference, in agreeing to the final document, sidetracked charges that the U.S. had been “obstructionist,” the New York Times reported.

So the Bush White House got some semi-favorable press from the leading liberal paper in the U.S. But at whose expense? As usual, Americans will pay and get nothing in return. This time, it is worse―a U.S. administration is giving away our sovereignty to unelected bureaucrats and global elitists. It’s quite a reversal―from rejecting the first U.N. global warming treaty, known as the Kyoto Protocol, to endorsing a much tougher and “comprehensive” treaty. It demonstrates, once again, how Bush has lost control of his administration and allows renegade bureaucrats at such agencies as the State Department and the CIA to set policy.

The media noted the turnaround when the State Department decided at the last minute to support a document that not only commits the U.S. to another treaty that will dismantle even more of the U.S. industrial base, but will plunder American taxpayers for more of their hard-earned tax dollars to be sent to the rest of the world. This is called, in the words of the White House press secretary, “financing the deployment” of “clean technologies” in the developing world and “assisting countries in adapting to climate change.” Another term for it is “foreign aid.”

Americans oppose additional foreign aid. But when it is presented in terms of saving the planet, it sounds more palatable. It is also popular to promote more foreign aid in the name of fighting AIDS, except for the fact that the U.N. has been caught exaggerating this problem, too. It is not fashionable to say―and even Rupert Murdoch of Fox News has jumped on the global warming bandwagon―but plenty of experts note the evidence that climate change is a natural phenomenon that we can’t do anything about. However, the U.N. sees the “problem” as another means by which it can increase its power. The scam is getting rather old, but people keep falling for it.

If there ever were a time for Republican presidential candidates to break with Bush and stake out a position against the U.N. and for American sovereignty in foreign affairs, this was it. And yet, at the December 12 presidential debate, as the Bali conference was underway, Senator John McCain said that while he thought the climate was changing because of human activity, it didn’t really matter whether humans were a factor or not. “Suppose that climate change is not real and all we do is adopt green technologies, which our economy and our technology is perfectly capable of. Then all we’ve done is given our kids a cleaner world,” he said. McCain seems oblivious to the prospect of giving the U.N. more power and authority and reducing our living standards in service to a lie.

“I agree with John. Climate change is real. It’s happening. I believe human beings are contributing to it,” declared Rudy Giuliani. “I think the best way to deal with it is through energy independence.” But how can American “independence” be achieved when politicians are making our economy subservient to the dictates of a global elite operating through the corrupt U.N.?

Where does Giuliani get the idea that human beings are “contributing” to global warming anyway? The U.N. says so, and that’s apparently good enough for him.

Alan Keyes, the new entry in the race, had the best answer on the topic. “I’m in favor of reducing global warming, because I think the most important emission we need to control is the hot air emission of politicians who pretend one thing and don’t deliver,” he said.

It is tragic to watch America decline while corrupt international bureaucracies grow in power and influence over us. It looks increasingly like Al Gore did win the election and is president today.