It should surprise precisely no one to find out that Waxman-Markey defies the principles of economics. What is disappointing is that Waxman-Markey’s deficiencies would be much more obvious to the public eye if the CBO were not determined to cover up those deficiencies by lowballing the average household cost estimate with a report that does not examine costs when the cap becomes tightened and onerous.
With all of the recent trouble we have had in getting honest CBO numbers, one wonders what the point is of keeping the office around in the first place. To be sure, the CBO did a great job in indicating recently that the Obama Administration’s health care reform plan is going to be a lot more expensive than the Administration itself had estimated, but apparently, CBO has decided to make up for that little bit of honesty with a little bit of dishonesty when it comes to analyzing cap-and-trade legislation.
I know that it is too late to implement the proposal I signed on to, for a carbon tax that would have dollar rate tied to twenty times the three year moving average temperature of the mean tropical troposphere anomaly. I wouldn’t feel so badly about that if Congress were about to implement a similarly excellent climate change bill. Alas, it is not–something that members of Congress would know if they took the time to read the gorram bill.
But why depart from Congressional tradition?
TNL