Cap-and-Trade Bill 'Biggest Tax in US History'

The cap-and-trade climate legislation that could come up for a House vote tomorrow makes no economic sense and “is likely to be the biggest tax in American history,” write the editors of the Wall Street Journal. Democrats are defending the bill with an incomplete Congressional Budget Office estimate that itself admits “does not indicate the potential decrease in gross domestic product.” And that will be disastrous.

“The hit to GDP is the real threat in this bill,” the Journal continues. “Higher prices will show up not just in electricity bills or at the gas station but in every manufactured good,” and companies will be forced to move manufacturing overseas. “The reality is that cost estimates for climate legislation are as unreliable as the models predicting climate change;” the bill will result in thousands of dollars of carbon taxes for every American family. “Even Democrats can’t repeal that reality.” (More Henry Waxman stories.)