Posted by
Steve on Thursday, May 21, 2009 9:25:22 AM
Cap and Trade, what does that mean to you? To Democrats in Congress, who do not want you to know what it really is, it is a bill to make energy producing companies pay their share to clean up the environment. But, since everyone knows that companies do not pay taxes, people do, the costs the companies get will be passed on to us in the form of higher energy costs.
How much will our energy go up? The estimated amount here in Phoenix for our electric to go up is just under $4000 per year. Gasoline costs are estimated to go up 74%. Those amounts are going to destroy the economy for sure. We are already in trouble from the banking and housing failures last fall. We have not even begun to get out of that hole. The Democrats in Congress must believe that adding thousands of dollars in new taxes for every American family is the way out of the recession/depression we are in? That is crazy talk. We need fewer tax dollars removed from our wallets, not more, to get us out of this problem.
Democrats never have been very good at understanding what gets us into or out of a recession. They believe that higher taxes got us out of the last recession. They are deluded in that thinking. They believe that higher spending is the way to get out of a recession. Higher spending usually puts us into a depression from a recession. That is why we are seeing this current recession last so long. We should be on our way out of the recession and have no signs that we have even hit bottom yet.
The Cap and Trade bill that the House of Representatives is supposed to pass out of committee within the next week is a disaster waiting to happen. Unfortunately for you and me, the Republicans in the House have almost no power at all. They could not stop the bill unless a lot of Democrats had second thoughts and voted with them. With the power structure the Democrats have, that is extremely unlikely. There is a better chance in the Senate, but even there the chances are slim. There are those northeast Republicans that tend to vote Democrat on these types of issues. That means a massive tax increase is in store by the end of the year. It also means that any chance the Democrats have of holding onto the House of Representatives and the Senate are also gone by the end of the year.
The public will scream loudly when faced with the high energy costs. The blame will fall squarely on the backs of the Democrats in Congress who passed the bill. Any person running against those Democrats would be wise to focus the public’s attention on the fact that their Congressman/woman voted a massive tax increase when we are in a recession. I am not just talking your usual massive 10% tax increase. I am talking about a tax increase that would be in the nature of 40-50%. That will get people’s attention real quick. Any Democrat who votes for the bill will be guaranteeing that they will not be back to Congress after the 2010 elections. Unless there are more stupid Democrat voters than I think there are.
Even though the bill would destroy the economy of the country, the Republicans should just put up a token resistance to the bill. They should talk against it. They should work to have it defeated. They should not filibuster the bill in the Senate. The reason is that letting the bill pass will destroy the Democrats chances at winning in the 2010 elections. The bill would do a lot of damage in the mean time. The bill would pass anyway. The Democrats have the votes to push it through. This is one to let go. You have to fight the fights that you can win. I can’t see pulling enough Democrats into the light to make any difference. You might get a few in the House who are in competitive districts, but none in the Senate. If the Republicans put up a fight in the House, they would not even get the few from the competitive districts.
This bill will destroy what is left of our economy. All that could be done from then on would be to pick up the pieces. The Democrats would probably put in some provisions that people below a certain level of income could apply for relief from these taxes. That would just frost the people not receiving the subsidies even more. There is no good thing that can come out of this for Democrats.