FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE, May 12, 2010
Contact: Amy Payne (703) 224-3200

ARLINGTON, Va. —The free-market grassroots group Americans for Prosperity (AFP) today tore the wrapping paper off the Kerry-Lieberman energy tax bill. Senators John Kerry (D-Mass.) and Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.) today released the American Power Act, a thinly veiled attempt to take energy austerity and so-called “green” energy subsidies and repackage them in a new way. Neither of the senators wants to admit what the bill is really about – allowing big government to wrest control of the nation’s energy – instead, they would prefer to talk about national security and “American power.”

Americans for Prosperity President Tim Phillips released the following statement:

“Senators Kerry and Lieberman may think that by repackaging their energy tax with a shiny new label that they can fool the American people. But they are dead wrong. This is a bill that uses crony corporatism to buy off political opposition in order to appease the environmental Left. Just because no one is using the same tired global warming rhetoric that has been soundly rejected by the American people, that does not mean that is not exactly what is going on here. No amount of new wrapping paper can hide the energy taxes and environmental extremism that are inherent in this bill. Americans for Prosperity has been and will continue to be all over the country warning citizens of the dangers energy taxes pose to our liberties, our jobs and economic well-being.”

The Kerry-Lieberman energy tax bill is a frightening replication of the Waxman-Markey bill that passed the House last summer. The bill still contains a cap-and-trade boondoggle; embraces crony corporatism by giving away emission permits to industries that support the bill; provides lip service to nuclear power by failing to resolve the spent fuel issue; doles out welfare-style electricity rebates in a weak attempt to offset skyrocketing consumer electricity prices; and threatens trade wars by enacting green tariffs on countries that do not burden their economies with cap-and-trade.