Washington, D.C., June 6, 2008—The Competitive Enterprise Institute congratulates the Senators who successfully defeated the global warming legislation sponsored by Joseph Lieberman (I-CT) and John Warner (R-VA) and championed by Environment and Public Works Committee Chairman Barbara Boxer (D-CA).
“The Senate is to be congratulated for giving the Lieberman-Warner-Boxer energy-rationing bill all the consideration it deserves,” said Myron Ebell, Director of Energy and Global Warming Policy for the Competitive Enterprise Institute. “The Senate has spent a week on legislation that everyone knew had no chance of passing and that if ever enacted would transfer trillions of dollars from consumers to special interests.”
The Lieberman-Warner-Boxer bill would have created a sprawling new bureaucracy to enforce the hundreds of mandates it contained, while raising prices throughout the economy, from manufactured goods to farm products. Proponents attempted to argue that the legislation would create jobs and stimulate the economy, but any rational analysis makes clear that it would have resulted in a massive burden to the U.S. economy overall.
“The opponents of the bill, especially Senator James Inhofe (R-OK), the ranking Republican on the Environment and Public Works Committee, did a great job showing that this cap-and-trade bill is really a huge but hidden energy tax on the American people,” said Ebell.
CEI is a non-profit, non-partisan public policy group dedicated to the principles of free enterprise and limited government. For more information about CEI, please visit our website at www.cei.org.
