Politics of Cap and Trade Just Cost You $2 Trillion

Conn Carroll / May 18, 2009

The New York Times reported Saturday:

How did cap and trade, hatched as an academic theory in obscure economic journals half a century ago, become the policy of choice in the debate over how to slow the heating of the planet? … The answer is not to be found in the study of economics or environmental science, but in the realm where most policy debates are ultimately settled: politics.
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Cap and trade, by contrast, is almost perfectly designed for the buying and selling of political support through the granting of valuable emissions permits to favor specific industries and even specific Congressional districts. That is precisely what is taking place now in the House Energy and Commerce Committee, which has used such concessions to patch together a Democratic majority to pass a far-reaching bill to regulate carbon emissions through a cap-and-trade plan.

The Heritage Foundation’s Center for Data Analysis has crunched the numbers on how the latest “buying and selling of political support” has changed the economic impacts of the Waxman-Markey energy tax legislation: (more…)