Weekly Column:   –  “Lately, something has been keeping me up at night.  It has been keeping the editorial writers at The Wall Street Journal up at night, too.  Cap and trade, cap and tax, carbon tax – it’s known by many names, but the heart of the policy aims to turn emissions into an economic quantity that can be bought, sold, and taxed.

Here is why I can’t sleep: this legislation squeaked through the U.S. House of Representatives on Friday, even though members of both parties opposed it.

The cost of this behemoth is over $600 billion in ten years.  It can be measured in taxes on energy companies and auto manufacturers and small businesses.  But each and every one of these costs will be passed on to the customers of these goods, and the heaviest burden will fall on the families that use energy in the home.  So much for not raising taxes on any American making less than $250,000 a year.

On top of the direct cost to American consumers of energy, there is the threat to the American economy.  A cap and trade policy will constrict U.S. Gross Domestic Product, costing our national economy $161 billion in 2020, according to The Wall Street Journal – $1,870 for a family of four.  By 2035, cap and trade would cost the same family $6,800.  During the first quarter of 2009, the U.S. economy contracted by 5.5 percent.  Now is certainly not the time to heap challenges on our national economy.

Another way to look at the sheer size of this measure is to place it in terms of jobs.  Columnist George Will has followed the “green jobs” initiative closely, around the world.  He noted on Thursday that Spain, which heavily subsidizes jobs in the green energy sector and operates under the European Union’s own cap and trade policy, enjoys a national unemployment rate of 18.1 percent.  I doubt George Will is sleeping well these days, either.

The Heritage Foundation says that, in the Eighth Congressional District, the House bill would cost us $421 million in personal income in 2012 – and, even worse, cause us to lose 3,715 jobs that year.

No dollar figure can be attached to the fact that India and China will follow no such rules.  In fact, each of those countries plans to double its consumption of coal between now and 2030.  They are the fastest-growing consumers of oil in the world, and their economic booms are built on fossil fuel consumption and cheap labor.  They will be glad to take any jobs they can away from America once they are done with their grand new infrastructure projects.

So instead of concentrating on a punishing slew of new laws designed to hamstring the U.S. economy, export American jobs and lay energy taxes at the feet of every American family – we ought to consider our infrastructure here at home. 

We need major improvements to our energy infrastructure: A more efficient electricity grid, a strong focus on domestic resources – like oil and gas from our Outer Continental Shelf, and an inclusive renewable fuels strategy to spur development of tomorrow’s energy. 

If cap and tax policy ends up becoming the law of our land, on the other hand, there is still some chance we will all be able to get some rest.  It will be a lot easier to go to bed early when staying up with the lights on means paying the tax man.”