Barack Obama grew the federal bureaucracy a bit more recently by creating a new agency within the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration to monitor global warming. According to a press release, this new bureaucracy will provide information to individuals and decision makers as we are “witnessing the impacts of climate change … including sea-level rise … earlier snowmelt and extended ice-free seasons in our waters.”

That’s just what we need – more liberal bureaucrats paid with your tax dollars to justify more Big Government liberal policies like cap and trade energy taxes. Of course, yesterday’s planned press conference at the National Press Club to promote the new agency had to be cancelled because of the snow storm that shut down Washington, D.C. for the past two days.

And so much for that snowmelt. As Washington continues digging out, we’re bracing for another 10 to 20 inches of snow tonight and tomorrow. I guess Al Gore came out of hiding, saw his shadow and guaranteed us six more weeks of winter! With each falling flake, Al’s global warming theory looks flakier and flakier.

By the way, cap and trade is not working as planned in Europe. But some are trying desperately to resuscitate it in the U.S. Senate, despite the many obituaries written lately for this massive energy tax.

In past reports, I’ve expressed skepticism about the so-called global warming consensus. Not only did the science seem suspect, often contradicting common sense, but it was clearly ideologically driven. Like the promise that more government programs would save money, the radical environmental movement has a terrible track record of making hysterical predictions that never materialize. And its solutions are always the same – bigger government and higher taxes.

In recent days, there have been shocking revelations that the science behind the global warming scare may well be a total scam. E-mails have been leaked from key scientists that appear to expose blatant data manipulation and efforts to suppress dissent. Science and academia are supposed to be all about free inquiry. But these scientists are acting more like petty liberal ideologues determined to pursue their leftwing agenda regardless of the facts.

I won’t go into all of the details about the emails in this report. You can read more here and here. But this is not just a scientific scandal. “Climategate” is a huge political scandal as well, encompassing leading leftwing luminaries like Al Gore, who have been working for years to impose various socialist schemes aimed at undermining our sovereignty, crippling our economy and redistributing our wealth, all under the guise of combating global warming.

I’m pleased to report that Senator Jim Inhofe of Oklahoma is demanding an investigation, and rightly so, because the stakes are tremendous. The entire premise of cap and trade – massive new energy taxes and vastly expanded government power – rests on this apparent scam.

In March, the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office (CBO) warned, “President Barack Obama’s budget would produce $9.3 trillion in deficits over the next decade, more than four times the deficits of Republican George W. Bush’s presidency.” That warning is already coming true. While Congress was debating ObamaCare, a new Big Government program expected to cost $1 trillion, the announcement came last week that the United States posted a record annual deficit of $1.4 trillion. To give you some perspective, the previous record deficit, recorded last year, was a “mere” $459 billion.

But, if things don’t change quickly in Washington, one budget analyst warns that it could get a lot worse than the CBO suggests. Brian M. Riedl of the Heritage Foundation says, “The White House figures are based on unrealistic estimates of discretionary spending, interest payments and interest rates.” According to Riedl, a more realistic analysis produces deficits “$4 trillion higher than recent estimates by the Obama administration and the Congressional Budget Office.” And if spending goes unchecked by future Congresses, the budget deficit could reach $2 trillion a year by 2019.

That kind of outrageous spending is unsustainable and will bankrupt America. But it helps to explain why liberal politicians are proposing a massive new energy tax, a value added tax, new surtaxes and excise taxes and more.

Friday evening, when most of you probably were just beginning to relax after a long week, your elected representatives in Washington were hard at work. I’d like to report that they were working hard for the good of the country, but I can’t say that. In fact, I believe very strongly that what the House did is very detrimental to the well-being of our nation.

Just after 7:15pm Friday, the House voted 219-to-212 to pass Barack Obama’s “cap and trade” bill. Cap and trade is another attempt by Big Government to manipulate the free market. Liberal politicians think that they know better than consumers and business owners, and they intend to force you to use products (alternative sources of energy) that are not economically viable. It’s another example of government picking winners and losers.

The losers under this bill are fossil fuels – coal, oil and natural gas. The winners are solar, wind and other alternative fuels, which you will end up subsidizing under this bill. To give you an idea of how inefficient and expensive the alternatives are, consider this analysis from the Manhattan Institute’s Center for Energy Policy and the Environment:

“There’s an unavoidable problem with renewable-energy technologies: From an economic standpoint, they’re big losers. …The U.S. Energy Information Administration reported in early 2008 that the government subsidizes solar energy at $24.34 per megawatt-hour (MWh) and wind power at $23.37 per MWh. Yet even with decades of these massive handouts, as well as numerous state-level mandates for utilities to use green power, wind and solar energy contribute less than 1% of our nation’s electricity.

“Compare the subsidies to renewables with those extended to natural gas (25 cents per MWh in subsidies), coal (44 cents), hydroelectricity (67 cents), and nuclear power ($1.59). These are the energy sources (along with oil, which undergirds transportation) that do the heavy lifting in our energy economy.

“The alternative technologies at the heart of Mr. Obama’s plan, relying on mandates and far greater handouts, will inevitably raise energy prices — and high power prices are job killers.”
Cap and trade has been described by Michigan Democrat John Dingell, who voted for the bill, as “a great big tax.” Billionaire investor Warren Buffett, who opposes cap and trade, called it “a huge tax … and a fairly regressive one.” So, supporters and opponents agree: It is a big tax and likely one of the largest in American history since it will tax energy – the lifeblood of our economy.

For the record, 96% of the votes to pass this “great big,” “huge and regressive” energy tax came from Democrats, while 94% of Republicans voted against it. The debate now shifts to the Senate, where Democrats will have to come up with 60 votes to prevent a likely filibuster.

On the merits alone, the bill is a disaster. For example: America is the Saudi Arabia of coal, from which half of the nation’s electricity is produced. But 96% of House Democrats just voted to tax coal, making it costlier to use. That makes no sense in the middle of a deep recession and with the president is predicting double digit unemployment. But, then again, this is the same logic that would not let us drill for our own oil when gas was $4.00 a gallon.

But far worse was the abuse of power liberals used to ram through one of the largest tax increases in history. Every politician who voted for this bill is guilty of gross malfeasance because not one of them read it. Not only was the bill over 1,200 pages when the debate began, but a 300-page amendment was mysteriously added just hours before the vote. For that reason alone, every member of the House would have been justified in voting no, and more of them should have.

If conservatives had done that while trying to pass the largest tax cut in history, the media would have howled about dictatorial tactics and the demise of democracy. But, so far, the media have been silent on this abuse of power, and that is a scandal of its own.

Obama’s Energy Tax

Speaker Nancy Pelosi announced yesterday that the House of Representatives will be voting on “cap and trade” legislation this week. A recent Rasmussen poll found that only 24% of likely voters correctly understand the term, and I’d be willing to bet that an even smaller share of Congress has read the 1,200 page bill. Representative John Dingell, a Democrat from Michigan, summarized it best when he said, “Nobody in this country realizes that cap and trade is a tax, and it’s a great big one!”

Writing in the Washington Post several weeks ago, Robert Samuelson put it this way: “The centerpiece of Obama’s agenda is a ‘cap and trade’ program. This would be, in effect, a tax on fossil fuels (oil, coal, natural gas). The idea is to raise their prices so that households and businesses would use less or switch to costlier ‘alternative’ energy sources, such as solar. In general, we would spend more on energy and get less of it.”

Spend more and get less. That sounds like Obama’s rationed healthcare proposal too! That concept is antithetical to economic progress and rising standards of living. But it’s generally the outcome of socialism and leftwing thinking.

According to an analysis by the Heritage Foundation, the “cap and trade” bill before the House will result in a “58 percent increase in gas prices, 90 percent for electricity, and 55 percent for natural gas. Cumulative higher energy costs for a household of four from 2012-2035 would reach nearly $20,000.” The Heritage Foundation also predicts more than one million job losses as a direct result of higher energy costs.

Just think about that for a moment. Here we are in the middle of a deep recession, with the president predicting double-digit unemployment, and this White House and the liberal politicians on Capitol Hill are scheming to impose one of the biggest tax increases in history. It will affect every American who turns on a light switch, drives to work or consumes products, since just about every economic activity involves the use of fossil fuels.