Weekly Column:   –  “The non-partisan Congressional Budget Office doesn’t make the news too often, but when it does show up in the papers, every American should sit up and take notice.

Such is the case this week, when the CBO identified every American family as a potential target of energy tax increases.  Even though the total cost to the American people was estimated at $646 billion – no small amount – CBO said that the true expense of the taxes in a new House bill will weigh in at $846 billion, $200 billion more than the taxes called for in the President’s budget. 

Those energy taxes will hit every American home and business, every time someone flips on a light switch.  Estimates vary, but the average utility bill could go up 55 percent as a result of a cap-and-trade system or a direct carbon tax.  The administration’s response to the higher energy costs which would be imposed on ordinary Americans is to create a tax credit to pay for their expensive electricity.  But this scheme, like robbing Peter to pay Paul, would only provide help for single Americans earning less than $23,000 per year, and a family of four making more than $42,000 per year would bear the full burden of the higher energy bills.

Those energy bills could be thousands of dollars higher per year than they are today.

The CBO made one other important observation in its report on the legislation: By creating new federal programs and government agencies, the bill would cost taxpayers an average of $800 million per year in administrative costs.

My objection to a cap-and-tax system is grounded in several basic objections that go far beyond the sheer cost of the proposal to American families.

First, we must not threaten the American economy, and especially rural jobs in the energy-intense agricultural and manufacturing sectors, with policies and taxes which countries like China and India won’t even consider. 

Second, cap-and-tax programs in other countries haven’t made a dent in emissions.  In many cases, the richest energy companies have gotten richer at the expense of smaller cooperative-type energy companies like those we have in Southern Missouri.

And third, American families will ultimately bear the cost of a cap-and-tax system.  The proposal acknowledges this by instituting the tax credit to help lowest-income American families with the cost.  But for every other American taxpayer, this plan asks them to shoulder higher energy costs at home and bear the risk of job losses as their employers cope with the same sky-high energy bills.  If they keep their jobs and their incomes, then they are asked to pay for a tax credit for others.  Not only is this system unsustainable, it also heaps the responsibility for paying these taxes squarely on the working middle class.

I never pose a problem without also proposing a solution, and there is a clear, commonsense solution here.  America needs clean energy and renewable fuels.  We have plenty of them coming to market right now, including biofuels, clean coal, and more hydroelectric power.  We should work to build out our national grid to make transmission more efficient.  And we must explore American energy resources – oil deposits and natural gas – to shift the balance of American energy consumption from foreign dictators who hate us to reliable domestic resources we can count on.”