Waxman Markey: the politics of lose/lose

The American Clean Energy and Security Act, currently slithering its way through congress will provide neither clean energy nor security to Americans. What it will provide is dramatically higher prices for virtually everything in the entire American economy. The bill, better known as the Waxman-Markey bill in honor of its authors, is a mishmash of confusing and politically correct provisions that were designed under the guise of stopping global warming. Of course, not even the bill’s authors really believe that any one provision in the 1,000 page behemoth will reduce the earth’s temperature by so much as 1/10th of a degree Fahrenheit.

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What the bill will do is ruin the American economy once and for all to the degree that not even a future president of the caliber of Ronald Reagan will be able to salvage what’s left. For instance, the bill calls for loans and grants that will benefit low-income communities, “minority-owned and woman-owned” businesses. It also calls for the mandatory establishment by electric utilities of recharging stations for electric automobiles across the nation. A brand new government bureaucracy will emerge charged with calculating and then controlling the total carbon emissions of each business in the United States. Given that bureaucracies tend to metasticize into ever more intrusive entitities, it is only a matter of time before they measure the carbon emissions of every individual American and soon we’ll be paying to breathe. Can anyone guess what the cost of such a masive scheme might be, given that the Administration’s goals include the wholesale conversion of gasoline powered automobiles to electric or hybrid vehicles? But the bigger question is, who is going to pay for this massive shift in the way America does business? You are, of course, as will your children and their children and their children’s children, leaving America a much poorer nation overall.

With Waxman-Markey we all lose

The bill’s authors are among the longest tenured and most liberal members of congress and serve as poster boys for mandatory term limits. Henry Waxman bears a remarkable and unfortunate physical resemblance to Heinrich Himmler, head of the German Gestapo during WWII, except Himmler’s nostrils weren’t quite as porcine as Waxman’s. Markey looks like Dick Cavett’s younger brother, the one who doesn’t have enough talent to go into show business and chooses politics instead. The main concern of both men appears to be righting all the perceived wrongs of which America stands guilty in their minds. Waxman in particular likes to think of himself as one who plays hardball and is especially fond of chairing congressional hearings that explore the wrongdoings of political opponents. Coupled with the Messiah’s new gasoline mileage standards legislation, Waxman-Markey will ensure that the next four or five generations of all Americans will become intimately acquainted with poverty. Whether it’s a cold February night in Minnesota or a sweltering August afternoon in Tuscon, Waxman-Markey, if passed, will dramatically increase the price Americans will pay to stay comfortable. It’s amazing that so few people are spotting the precipice toward which the American economy is headed. If I had to trust either a greedy Wall Street banker or a long-serving Democrat politician, I’d choose the banker every time. At least when they steal money someone benefits. With Waxman-Markey we all lose.