Morning Bell: A Jobs Killing Bill
Conn Carroll /
Testifying on Capitol Hill yesterday, Energy Secretary Steven Chu, Transportation Secretary Roy LaHood, and EPA administrator Lisa Jackson all pitched the latest cap and trade bill in the House as a “jobs bill.” Jackson told the House Energy and Commerce Committee, “This is a jobs bill, and it is a jobs bill that focuses our country’s energy on the growth industry of the future.” But when Rep. Joe Barton (R-TX) asked Jackson how her agency was able to release a cost estimate of the bill after she admitted she had not even read it, Jackson replied: “We had to make assumptions.” You know what happens when you make assumptions, don’t you?
The “preliminary analysis” released by Jackson’s EPA found that cap and trade would cost the average American household an extra $98 to $140 a year. These numbers are far below most academic studies of cap and trade legislation. For example, a study done by MIT Professor John Reilly found that a scheme modeled after the far more lenient Warner-Lieberman cap and trade bill would cost the average American household a combined $3,900 every year in higher energy costs and taxes. Our own Center for Data Analysis shows Lieberman-Warner would have cost the U.S. economy $4.8 trillion by 2030.