The Tennessee ConserVOLiance

Cross posted by Toni at Bear Creek Ledger

I’d previously listed some of the reasons I’m not a McCain supporter nor will I ever be a McCain supporter.

Now there’s the McCain/Lieberman bill which is a broad based energy tax. I knew about McCain’s love for the global warming fanatics but hadn’t really picked up his bill to incur a back door tax on energy.

From National Review:

The proposed bill, co-sponsored with Joe Lieberman, mandates an energy-rationing scheme that all economists acknowledge is equivalent to a broad-based energy tax which is similar to Bill Clinton’s 1993 Btu tax proposal. Energy would be taxed through the back door by placing a cap on the amount of carbon dioxide (CO2) that energy-producing companies can emit. It puts a legal limit on the amount of energy that can be drawn from conventional sources such as oil, coal, and natural gas.

McCain’s energy tax would kick in whenever an energy-producing company wants to expand its output above the cap. If, for example, a utility company that is bumping up against its emissions cap wants to increase its production of electricity generated from coal, oil, or natural gas, it will have to buy permission to do so by purchasing unused permits from other companies. The same would be true of an oil refiner that wants to increase its output of gasoline or home heating oil, possibly to meet new consumer demand. The purchase price of the permits is a tax, and will have the same effects as a tax on the market; it would raise the price of the energy source, i.e. coal, oil, etc., and therefore, it would likewise raise the costs of all production that relies on those sources, as well as the price of all goods and services that those production processes generate.

The EPA has estimated what the McCain energy tax would mean to consumers. Since the bill’s provisions are phased in, the full cost of the tax would not be felt for a number of years. But in a letter to Senator McCain dated July 2007, the EPA estimated that the tax will be about $.26 cents in current dollars per gallon of gasoline by 2030 and $.68 cents per gallon by 2050. For electricity, the EPA estimates that the McCain energy tax would increase individual’s electric bills by 22 percent in 2030 and 25 percent in 2050.

This bill is based on junk science and lot of mumbo jumbo by a lot enviro-MENTAL advocacy groups. Ever wonder why McCain always has these bills with a liberal leaning Democrat? Think about it: McCain/Feingold (restriction of free speech) and McCain/Kennedy (amnesty for millions of illegal aliens) .

Technorati Tags: 2008 Election, GOP, John McCain, McCain/Lieberman Energy Bill