There’s a relatively new front in the war against elephantine
government and the Obama administration’s socialist dreams. It’s
called The Energy Tax Prevention Act of 2011, and it’s gotten less
attention than it deserves, even in the conservative press.
If it becomes law, the bill, which the full House
Committee on Energy and Commerce approved 34-19 on Tuesday, would
prohibit the federal Environmental Protection Agency from forcing a
carbon cap and trade system on an unwilling nation, something the
EPA has already begun doing. The bill, with majority support in the
House, will likely be approved by that body later in the spring.
Its prospects of making it to the floor in the
Democratic-controlled Senate are less certain.
Cap and trade is the Soviet-style system whereby decisions
on energy use throughout the economy are taken from the private
sector, where they’ve rightly always been, and turned over to
politicians and bureaucrats. In every contest to name the quickest
way to make a Third World country out of the U.S., this scam has
come in first. The cover for this audacious leftist putsch is that
we need the government to parcel out permission to use fossil fuels
in order to save us from manmade global warming and its attendant
horrors (which, news out of Japan has demonstrated once again, are
trifling compared to what Mother Nature can dish out without any
help from us).
Over the past two years an increasing number of Americans
have figured out that global warming, along with the left’s
favorite nostrum to head it off, cap and trade, are frauds of such
audacious dimensions as to make the Piltdown hoax look like a
fraternity prank by comparison. They’ve also figured out that cap
and trade would severely limit the availability of energy and drive
the price of everything up, the last things an economy struggling
to recover needs. (Rather than burden the economy with cap and
trade, why not just shoot it in the back of the head? This would be
slightly quicker, more humane, and accomplish the same
thing.)
This is why while a cap and trade bill was approved in the
U.S. House in 2009 with room to spare, a companion bill never made
it to the floor of the Senate in ‘09 or 2010. Americans were
catching on.
Undeterred by the prospect of $4 a gallon gasoline in the
near term, and unambiguous evidence that the American people don’t
want cap and trade any more than they wanted Obamacare when that
was rammed through, Obama and his EPA have already started
implementing rules which, if they are allowed to metastasize
nationally, would essentially put government apparatchiks in charge
of the American economy.
So far about a dozen states have sued the federals to
block enforcement of these destructive rules. One state, Texas, has
told the EPA to bugger off. They won’t cooperate with enforcement.
Comes now the “Energy Tax Prevention Act,” which would permanently
strip the EPA of the power and funds to enforce cap and
trade.
The bill in no way alters the Clean Air Act, which would
still oblige the EPA to regulate real air pollutants such as lead,
ozone, nitrogen oxides, sulfur dioxide, carbon monoxide, and
particulate matter. But greenhouse gases would be stricken from the
list of pollutants as there is no convincing evidence that they
are, well, pollutants.
The Senate bill, authored by James Inhofe (R-Oklahoma),
has 42 co-sponsors, including one Democrat, Joe Manchin of West
Virginia. But this is a party-line business, with Democrats, the
party of government, nearly solidly in favor of the nation’s
economy being run from Washington.
Matt Dempsey, communications director of the Senate
Committee on Environment and Public Works, concedes it will be
tricky to get this matter to the Senate floor with Democrats
controlling the calendar, but said, “We will look at every
opportunity to bring this bill to the Senate floor,” including
perhaps attaching this bill as an amendment to other
legislation.
“We’re working across the aisle,” Dempsey told me. “We’re
hoping that passage in the House will create some momentum in the
Senate. With gasoline prices on the rise, there’s some sentiment
now, even among Democrats, to slow the EPA down.”
One of the Senate co-sponsors is rookie Florida Republican
Senator Marco Rubio. “At a time when Florida families and
businesses are already struggling with high unemployment and slow
economic growth, the last thing we need is unaccountable
bureaucrats in Washington imposing an energy tax through regulation
that would increase electricity and gasoline prices,” Rubio said.
“This bill not only protects Florida’s families but will also
eliminate some of the uncertainty preventing job creators from
expanding their businesses and employing more people.”
GOP spokesman Charlotte Baker says members of the House
Committee on Energy and Commerce have been hearing the same
sentiments from their constituents. “There’s has been a lot of
backlash to what the EPA is attempting,” she said.
Keep an eye on this one. It’s central to the power
struggle going on now that will determine how many of America’s
freedoms survive the current administration, devoted as it is to
command and control.
