There is no escaping the reality of our current economic maladies. The U.S. economy has shed trillions of dollars in recent months, the stock market is languishing in the low 8,000’s, and our national unemployment hovers just below 10 percent. In Michigan, our unemployment is 14.1 percent and climbing, and we are in solid double digits throughout the Rust Belt. And yet, despite our fragile economy, House Democrats have turned a blind eye to reality, pursuing a reckless climate bill that stands to bankrupt America’s working families, with no guarantee of reducing global emissions.

The proposed carbon mandates under consideration would mean that the United States could not emit more in the year 2050 than we emitted in 1910. This is a daunting task considering that in 1910 the United States had only 92 million people, compared to an estimated 420 million in 2050. The only nations in the world today that emit at the proposed levels are struggling nations, such as Belize, Jordan, Haiti, and Somalia. In order to reach the 80 percent reduction required by cap-and-tax, emissions from the transportation sector would have to drop to zero, as would those from ALL electricity generation, and we would still need to reduce all other sources of greenhouse gas emissions by 50 percent.

The costs for such misguided policies are staggering. The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) recently determined that rolling back the clock to reach 1910 emissions levels would cost $864 billion, while some estimates put the number closer to $1.5 trillion, and it will be America’s working families left holding the tab.

As a candidate, President Obama declared, “Under my plan of a cap and trade system electricity rates would necessarily skyrocket … that will cost money. They will pass that money on to consumers …” The President’s Budget Director, Peter Orszag, has added: “firms would not ultimately bear most of the costs of the [carbon] allowances but instead would pass them along to their customers in the form of higher prices….price increases would be essential to the success of a cap-and-trade program.”

Cap-and-tax will essentially kick working families when they are down. In 2008, approximately 21 percent of all utility accounts were overdue, with folks carrying past due balances, on average, of $160 on electric bills and $360 for natural gas. In some parts of Michigan, 1 out of 3 households were behind on their utility bills – and the situation has likely worsened as those figures were compiled before last autumn’s financial collapse. Families in coal-dependent states, particularly in the Midwest, could be hit even harder.

Under the cap-and-tax scheme, we will all pay a new tax every time we flip a switch or fill up our gas tanks. In fact, our utility bills could increase 40-50 percent, and that will only make our business climate worse at this most critical time. According to some estimates, the reckless cap-and-tax scheme will kill millions of jobs and dramatically increase utility costs for the average American household at a time when working families can least afford it. CBO also estimated that gasoline costs would increase by 77 cents per gallon and diesel by 88 cents, fostering a greater reliance on imported oil from nations who are not exactly our best friends. Yes, times are tough, yet this proposal puts a bullseye squarely on the backs of working families who are struggling to put food on the table and keep the lights on.

We are not engaged in a guessing game – we have the luxury of examining empirical evidence of past forays into this misguided policy. All one has to do is look at the results of the European Union’s cap-and-tax scheme – it was a failure. CO2 emissions in the U.S. fell by 1.8 percent in 2006, compared to a 0.3 percent increase in emissions in the EU, according to the Energy Information Association (EIA). Both economies grew at a near-identical pace in 2006, about 3 percent for the year. Given the economic conditions we’re facing today, we should not try to replicate the EU’s failed experiment. Not to mention that at the end of the day, emissions increased in the EU.

Climate change is a global problem that requires global solutions. In late May, the EIA released its forecast predicting that global energy demand is expected to soar 44 percent over the next two decades – with most of the demand coming from developing countries such as China and India. Yet, Waxman’s cap-and-tax legislation fails to take into account the growth of emissions in countries like China and India, where rapidly increasing emissions would negate costly American sacrifices. China is the number one emitter in the world, with annual emissions growth alone equal to the total yearly output of Germany.

Without international participation, jobs and emissions will simply shift overseas to countries that require few, if any, environmental protections, harming the global environment as well as the U.S. economy. The jobs and industries that will bear the greatest costs of cap-and-tax are the industries we must keep in America in order to remain a power on the world stage. Quite simply, cap-and-trade caps our growth and trades our jobs.

From 2000 to 2008, we’ve lost 3.8 million manufacturing jobs — a decline of 22 percent. At the same time, imports were up 29 percent — a direct correlation. Michigan and the Rust Belt has been ground zero for these losses. The manufacturing and energy intensive industrial sectors are highly competitive, and more often than not, the cost of energy is the difference between operating in the United States and shutting the doors to move overseas.

If one truly cares about the planet, why do we want to make steel in China rather than in the United States where our carbon emissions are one-third that of the Chinese per ton of steel produced? One Arkansas refinery recently testified that under a cap-and-tax regime, they would be forced to close their 1,200-employee plant while India builds the largest in the world to ship fuel to the United States with nowhere near the environmental protections we have. We’re not helping the environment by sending industries that operate cleanly and efficiently in the United States to a regulation-free China or India.

Many prominent Midwest Democrats have voiced their concerns as well. Michigan Rep. John Dingell recently said of cap-and-trade, “Nobody in this country realizes that cap and trade is a tax, and it’s a great big one…” And Sen. Sherrod Brown said, “It really does say to manufacturing, ‘Go to China, where they have weaker environmental standards.’ And that’s a very bad message in bad economic times — in any economic times.”

In addition to the alarming costs to American businesses and families, it is equally confounding that the 1,200-page bill ignores the very source that accounts for 73 percent of all of our nation’s emissions-free electricity: nuclear power. We have got to get our priorities straightened out.

Nuclear is not only emissions-free, but renewing our commitment to nuclear power will create countless jobs at a time when our nation endures near double-digit unemployment.

Overall, the United States has 104 operating nuclear reactors generating 20 percent of the nation’s electricity. Other developed countries rely more heavily on nuclear energy, such as France, which gets 80 percent of all its power from nuclear.

We do have a commonsense Republican alternative, the “all of the above” American Energy Act, which calls for the construction of 100 new nuclear reactors over the next 20 years. The expansion of nuclear power would create hundreds of thousands of good-paying, high-skilled and permanent jobs. According to data from Oxford Economics, building 100 new nuclear reactors and an appropriate number of enrichment and reprocessing plants over the next 20 years would create 356,000 manufacturing and construction jobs, 242,000 permanent jobs, and an additional 404,000 jobs from induced economic activity. In total, this amounts to over 1 million new jobs.

In this debate over climate change, it seems we have lost sight of our true goals. The focus for Nancy Pelosi and Henry Waxman has become a cap-and-tax scheme as an end in itself – and it will be America’s working families who will pay the ultimate price with higher bills and lost jobs. We have a unique opportunity and a responsibility to reduce emissions and preserve our economy – the American public is desperate for solutions, but a national energy tax is not the answer.

Congressman Fred Upton represents the 6th District of Michigan in the House of Representatives.