New Documents Show Cap And Trade= Massive Energy Tax

No surprise to the Right Soup, but the Obama administration has privately concluded that a cap and trade law would cost American taxpayers up to $200 billion a year, the equivalent of hiking personal income taxes by about 15 percent.

A previously unreleased analysis prepared by the U.S. Department of Treasury says the total in new taxes would be between $100 billion to $200 billion a year. The cost per American household would be an extra $1,761 a year.

The documents (PDF) were obtained under the Freedom of Information Act by the free-market Competitive Enterprise Institute and released yesterday.

House Republican Leader John Boehner has estimated the additional tax bill would be at $366 billion a year, or $3,100 a year per family. The Heritage Foundation says that, by 2035, “the typical family of four will see its direct energy costs rise by over $1,500 per year.”

CNET says:

The FOIA’d document written by Judson Jaffe, who joined the Treasury Department’s Office of Environment and Energy in January 2009, says: “Given the administration’s proposal to auction all emission allowances, a cap-and-trade program could generate federal receipts on the order of $100 (billion) to $200 billion annually.” (Obviously, any final cap-and-trade system may be different from what Obama had proposed, and could yield higher or lower taxes.)

Because personal income tax revenues bring in around $1.37 trillion a year, a $200 billion additional tax would be the equivalent of a 15 percent increase a year. A $100 billion additional tax would represent a 7 percent or 8 percent increase a year.
One odd point: The document written by Jaffee includes this line: “It will raise energy prices and impose annual costs on the order of XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX.” The Treasury Department redacted the rest of the sentence with a thick black line.

The Freedom of Information Act, of course, contains no this-might-embarrass-the-president exemption. You’d hope the presidential administration that boasts of being the “most open and transparent in history” would be more forthcoming than this.

Cap And Tax will result in windfall profits for GE (also owner of Obama propaganda vehicles MSNBC and NBC), Al Gore and Goldman Sachs (who has been awarded the plum job of making a market for trading carbon credits.)

Cap and Tax passed the House; now it is up to the Senate to stop it. This energy tax will put undo burdens on families who are already strapped due to the horrid economy. We must stand together and say NO to our Senators and Representatives, lest we be saddled with this insanity forever. Once passed, it will place our country under UN climate-change rule, and remove our sovereign governance.

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