Senate Rejects Energy-Rationing Bill

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.