***Update: A few minutes before the House Energy and Commerce Committee's markup of the bill, Representative Waxman released a new 946-page Amendment in the Nature of a Substitute. The text is available here.
Representatives Henry Waxman and Ed Markey have introduced their 932-page energy tax bill and a short summary on how carbon dioxide emissions allowances will be allocated. The irony of the bill's summary is the first headline--"Consumer Protection." The summary goes to great lengths to explain how the bill will protect consumers from the economic harm created by the energy taxes implicit in the Waxman-Markey bill itself.
We do not know how much this plan will cost American citizens, but the consensus, even from people who support the bill, is that the bill is a large tax that will ultimately be paid by average Americans.
The Institute for Energy Research (IER) is a not-for-profit organization that conducts intensive research and analysis on the functions, operations, and government regulation of global energy markets. IER maintains that freely-functioning energy markets provide the most efficient and effective solutions to today’s global energy and environmental challenges and, as such, are critical to the well-being of individuals and society.
