FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: April 1, 2009
Contact: Phil Kerpen or James Valvo (202) 349-5880

WASHINGTON—The free market grassroots organization Americans for Prosperity (AFP) today released a statement regarding the discussion draft for global warming legislation released by U.S. Reps. Henry Waxman (D-Calif.) and Ed Markey (D-Mass.). The draft legislation was released in response to big government’s capitulation in the face of massive lobbying efforts by environmental extremists and echoes Washington’s continuing futile effort to centrally plan the economy.

AFP released the following statement from Phil Kerpen, the group’s national director of policy:

“A marker has been laid down in the debate over global warming legislation. It is now clear that Washington elites are committed to sacrificing the U.S. economy for their own environmental vanity, even during times of economic crisis. The discussion draft released by Reps. Waxman and Markey is wrongheaded and will cripple economic recovery, while steamrolling personal freedom. A centrally-planned bureaucracy exercising control over every aspect of energy use--crucial to so many aspects of modern life--is the furthest thing from liberal or progressive.

“The Waxman-Markey legislation is deeply flawed because it wrongly presupposes that the government is capable of mitigating the negative economic impacts that are associated with cap-and-trade schemes. Numerous economic studies have concluded that cap-and-trade plans will destroy jobs, drain family budgets, and significantly raise the cost of both energy and consumer goods. These effects are inherent in cap-and-trade, whose purpose is to make energy more expensive and ration its use. No amount of enlightened central planning can avoid that fact.

“The legislation claims that it will create green jobs, but in order to create those jobs it must first destroy many millions more well-paying, existing jobs than it could ever possibly create. The jobs that will be created will not be genuine economically productive jobs, but rather jobs that represent the diversion of resources necessary to comply with a federal mandate. If that is the job creation we want, then we should all hail the tax code for creating so many jobs for accountants and lawyers.

“The Waxman-Markey draft also claims to ‘save consumers hundreds of billions in energy costs,’ but nothing could be further from the truth. Imposing draconian cuts in fossil fuel use on companies and forcing them to experiment with expensive and unproven technologies will be enormously expensive. These increased costs will be passed along to consumers in the form of higher prices for electricity, gasoline and any product that travels to market. If it is really possible to avoid higher costs to consumers, then fossil fuel use would never be reduced and there would be no rationale for this bill.

“The proposal also skirts one of the most important issues concerning cap-and-trade: allowance allocation. Central planners have yet to decide if they will auction all of the permits for businesses to continue operating--as the White House prefers--or if they will pick-and-choose which companies will be given allowances as subsidies to buy their political support.

“Regardless of how the initial allocation is handled, the scheme would create a massive new industry in the secondary markets--this is yet another outrageous Wall Street bailout. Enron and Goldman Sachs originally cooked up cap-and-trade as a get rich quick scheme. Now other Wall Street cheerleaders like General Electric and AIG are well positioned to make billions buying and selling allowances and a wide variety of derivatives based on them. Turning over our energy policy to Wall Street risks the creation of another bubble in our financial system, all at taxpayer expense.

“The most astonishing thing about the draft legislation is that for trillions of dollars in higher taxes, higher energy prices, Wall Street bailouts, and a vast new federal bureaucracy there is no environmental benefit. Nearly every expert agrees that this policy will make no detectable difference in global greenhouse gas emissions or global average temperatures; this is all pain and no gain. I believe most Americans are not willing to spend thousands of dollars a year just to get a warm, green feeling with no actual environmental benefit.”