Today’s Calamity: A Second Call for Transparency
Nicolas Loris /
Our Tuesday rendition of Cap and Trade Calamities discussed how only the EPA was given the semi-draft form of the Boxer-Kerry cap and trade bill to model the economic effects. The Heritage Foundation’s Center for Data Analysis, along with several other organizations (including other government organizations) that modeled the Waxman-Markey cap and trade bill, do not have access. We have another call for transparency – this time from the House side.
On October 2, Chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee Henry Waxman sent a letter to Heritage’s David Kreutzer, lead author of our analysis of the Waxman-Markey cap and trade legislation. The letter included 33 questions about the details of our model, the details of our assumptions, the details of our policy assumptions and the interpretation and presentation of our results.
As David Kreutzer writes in his Politico op-ed, “We were delighted to engage. Our study had reached conclusions not at all pleasant to the eyes of the bill sponsors. It showed that, when all the tax impacts were added up, the Waxman-Markey legislation would cost the average per-family-of-four cost almost $3,000 per year. Over the 2012-2035 time period, we forecast total per-family-of-four costs would tally roughly $71,500.