Senate Poised to Debate Lieberman-Warner Energy-Rationing Bill
Washington, D.C., May
30, 2008—The U.S. Senate on Monday will likely start debate on energy-rationing
legislation that would raise energy prices dramatically for American consumers,
while benefiting big business special interests.
“Americans who don’t think gasoline prices are high enough
should be thrilled to support the Lieberman-Warner cap-and-trade bill,” said Myron Ebell, Director of Energy and Global Warming
Policy for the Competitive Enterprise Institute.
“Similar ineffective global warming policies have pushed
gas prices above eight dollars a gallon in the European Union,” Ebell noted. “Higher electricity and gas prices would hit
poor people the hardest, but probably wouldn’t bother former Vice President Al
Gore or Senator Barbara Boxer’s neighbors in Marin County, California.”
“The Lieberman-Warner energy-rationing bill would be the
biggest government intervention in the economy since the Second World War, when
the federal government put the U.S.
on war footing and handed out ration coupons,” Ebell concluded.
Energy Experts Available for
Interviews
Myron Ebell
Director of Energy Policy
202-331-2256
William Yeatman
Energy Policy
Analyst
202-331-2270
Chris Horner
Senior Fellow
[email protected]
Iain Murray
Senior Fellow
[email protected]
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For more information about CEI, please visit our website at www.cei.org.
Facts about Lieberman-Warner Energy-Rationing Bill,
S.
2191/S. 3036
Lieberman-Warner = a
tax.
Cap-and-trade
can only work by raising the price of lower-priced hydrocarbon fuels, so that
people are forced either to use higher-priced alternatives or to use less
energy. Even worse, it’s hidden
tax. Voting for higher taxes can lead to
election defeats, but cap-and-trade makes it much harder for consumers to know
that their elected officials are to blame for rising energy prices. In a report released last April, the
Congressional Budget Office says that “most of the
cost of meeting a cap on CO2 emissions would be borne by consumers, who would
face persistently higher prices for products such as electricity and gasoline.”
Lieberman-Warner = a wealth transfer scheme.
The
primary purpose of cap-and-trade is not to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, but
to transfer wealth from consumers to politically-powerful special
interests. That’s why so many big
companies support cap-and-trade. In
fact, higher energy costs will hit poor people the hardest, since they spend a
larger share of income on energy.
Lieberman-Warner = big government central planning.
Lieberman-Warner
puts the federal government in charge of deciding how much energy Americans can
use. It would create new boards and
agencies with enormous and ill-defined powers and would require huge new
bureaucracies to administer all the red tape.
The ethanol mandates of 2005 and 2007 are showing once again the
disastrous effects of even just a little central planning.
Lieberman-Warner = Open to
Political Favoritism and Corruption.
It’s
no coincidence that the biggest promoter of cap-and-trade until its demise was
the Enron Corporation.
Lieberman-Warner = The Most Ineffective and Expensive Way to
Address Potential Global Warming.
The European Union’s Emissions
Trading Scheme is proving horrendously expensive and unpopular but is actually
doing little to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. See Open Europe’s analysis, “Europe’s Dirty Secret: Why the EU ETS Isn’t Working”,
at openeurope.org.uk.