Senate Dems Try to Rebrand "Cap and Trade"

(AP)  Senate Democrats tried out a new catch phrase Wednesday to sell their global warming bill: pollution reduction and investment, or PRI.

But it's just another name for cap and trade, a term derided by Republican critics as "cap and tax" because it will increase energy prices and which Democratic polls have shown faring poorly with voters.

The rebranding is an indication of the uphill battle the climate bill, which would cap greenhouse gases and also allow industries to buy emission allowances, faces in the Senate.

A number of Democratic senators, currently entangled in the heated health care debate, said they continued to have trouble with key elements of the climate legislation. Several said it would be a huge challenge, perhaps impossible, to try to get a climate bill passed this year.

The idea to remake cap and trade into pollution reduction and investment came from Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass., author of the bill unveiled Wednesday. He came up with it about a month ago to refocus attention on what the bill would do, not how it goes about doing it.

"Cap and trade doesn't mean anything to people," Kerry said in an interview, insisting that "this is an actual description of what's happening here."

At a news conference on the bill, cap and trade, the legislation's centerpiece, got nary a mention. Instead, the buzz words were "national security," "economic growth" and "jobs from clean energy development." Kerry and Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-Calif., the other key sponsor, entitled it The Clean Energy Jobs and American Power Act.

"We are here and we introduced this legislation because of one word, security," said Kerry. "It is time to reinvent the way Americans use energy."

The words "cap and trade," "global warming" and "climate" also didn't appear in a White House statement responding to the bill's introduction.

"With the draft legislation ... we are one step closer to putting America in control of our energy future and making America more energy independent," Obama said. "My administration is deeply committed to passing a bill that creates new American jobs and the clean energy incentives that foster innovation."

Cap and trade is still the centerpiece of the Senate bill, as it is in the House-passed version. Under cap and trade, emissions of heat-trapping gases from power plants, refineries and factories would face increasingly more stringent limits, or caps. Companies could then invest in pollution-reducing technologies, or buy and sell permits to meet the cap, the trade portion.

The bill calls for a 20 percent reduction in greenhouse gases by 2020, and an 80 percent cut by mid-century.

Environmentalists said Wednesday that all along they had been touting the energy security and jobs that would come from the bill.

"We don't even talk about it in terms of cap and trade," said Anna Aurilio, director of Environment America. "Cap and trade is a very confusing term and it is not accurate. What we are doing is reducing pollution."

Republican critics, who frequently have referred to the House-passed bill as "cap and tax" maintaining it would lead to soaring energy prices, weren't about to join in on the rhetorical shift.

"These are fancy, complicated words for high-cost energy," said Sen. Lamar Alexander, R-Tenn.

Sen. James Inhofe, R-Okla., a strong critic of climate legislation, said Kerry and Boxer were making "an earnest attempt ... to refashion the obvious" but that they "produced yet another massive energy tax that will destroy jobs (and) raise electricity and gasoline prices."

Sen. Roger Wicker, R-Miss., called the Democratic bill a "cap and trade scheme" that "would suppress our economic recovery, cost jobs across our economy and result in higher prices on everything from energy to food for every single American."

The Environmental Protection Agency, meanwhile, put additional pressure on Congress to address climate change by announcing that for the first time it will regulate carbon dioxide releases from new power plants, factories and refineries or whenever they are significantly expanded. Supporters of the climate legislation have argued Congress should act to avoid less flexible action by the EPA.

[hull7777]

The "cap & trade" or whatever you want to call is just another way to increase taxes to fund the Government. Whenever, you increase corporate taxes, unemployment increases (jobs are lost) to make up the difference in overhead costs. When will the Government understand this.

The increase in Clean Energy jobs is like funny money. Yes, they will increase and Government jobs (non revenue) will increase; however, they will not make up for the real loss of jobs. What about the increase cost of electricity, fuel, transportation, food, etc. The taxpayers have to pay for that, again!

[Stevenapoli7]

Why should I want to pay higher energy bills for a program that won't make a difference?

[woltommel]

Senate Dems Try to Rebrand "Cap and Trade"
vvvvvvvvv
How's "Breaking and Entering" my wallet work?
We can spend more of "your" money to save you money.
vvvvvvvvvvvv
How many people would shop at the store that takes your money
then later tells you what you bought? I guess there's a few of
you that trust our government.

[faceofus]

There are so many of us just struggling to put food on the table and keep a roof over our heads. What is wrong with these politicians? It is absolutely no wonder that congressional approval is at an all-time low!

[donbl1]

Is congress every honest?

Pretty bad when CBS starts taking shots.

[albo58]

Boxer and Kerry...you know it can't be good! These hypocrits love to make changes that don't affect themselves financially and damn the average American! These buffoons are pathetic!

[just_a_voter]

It will all be money out of our pockets and not out of their pockets - so why should they care - wait till they come up for re-election - I'll walk thru rain, sleet or snow to vote each one of them out.

[SHEETPAN]

Which is it? Global warming or Climate change? Cap and Trade Or Pollution reduction Investment Act? How stupid do they think we are? If large factories can buy carbon credits that will allow them to continue releasing the same amount of CO2 into tha air as they always have, simply by paying a fee. Then you know that this is just another way for the government to steal our hard earned money. It's not a direct tax, so the politicians can say they have'nt raised our taxes. But the affected companies will simply raise thier prices to offset the new overhead. We will pay more for almost everything, especially energy. This is an economic disaster. When a nation stops acting in it,s own self-interest, it,s bound to go the way of Rome. All of this madness is in the name of the new state religion of Environmentalism. I can,t help but think that somethings rotten in Denmark, AKA D.C.

[woltommel]

Copenhagen!!
somethings rotten in Denmark, AKA D.C.

If Chicago wants to secede, it can burn like rome, ummmm it already has.

[mitdgreenb]

The key, whether you call it cap and trade or PRI or whatever, is in where the money goes. Cap and trade systems allow for the purchase of offsets (the "trade"). But what constitutes an offset? That's the Devil in the details.

Where cap and trade has been implemented, there tend to be two problems with the offsets. First, accounting for offsets can be quite nebulous, akin to the current Administration's "jobs created or not lost". There's no way to track "jobs not lost" and, similarly, there's a lot of haze around "carbon not emitted." Compounding this is the second problem: the offsets can be traded internationally. This leads to numerous problems:
1) The countries "creating" the offsets have every incentive to fudge the accounting.
2) The money goes to these countries... not to domestic infrastructure.
3) The money goes to these countries... not to domestic jobs.

The end result is therefore:
A) The costs get passed to the users of energy. It's a sort of tax and, like all taxes, it tends to bring the economy down.
B) The energy producers have no real incentive to stop polluting because they can buy offsets and pass along the cost.
C) The Third World makes out great through fuzzy accounting and our collective guilt about polluting the planet.
If you doubt this, please do a bit of research on the failure of the German cap and trade system to reduce German emissions.

The right answer is to sure up the accounting and ensure that the money is kept in DOMESTIC renewable energy credits. This is still a tax on all of us, but it works to create competition for the "dirty" energy producers. And it creates domestic jobs to build renewable energy infrastructure... and therefore offsets the detrimental economic effects of the tax. Most of all, it moves us toward the goal of having the US powered by renewable power. I'm a free trader... but not of carbon offsets!

[hungry1968-16]

by swin5 September 30, 2009 8:16 PM EDT
How about calling it the 'Final De-Industrialization Of America Act'?





That title was already taken by Bush and his "Free Trade / Everything for Globalization" initiatives.