New School Politics

GOP Blocks Cap-And-Trade Bill

Ryan | 6 06 2008

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From the AP this morning:

Senate Republicans on Friday blocked a global warming bill that would have required major reductions in greenhouse gases, after a bitter debate over its economic costs and whether it would substantially raise gasoline and other energy prices.

Democratic leaders fell a dozen votes short of getting the 60 needed to end a Republican filibuster on the measure and bring the bill up for a vote. The 48-36 vote failed to reach even a majority, a disappointment to the bill’s supporters.

Although few expected this bill to actually go very far, the fact that it was shot down so quickly is a good sign for now.

The Climate Security Act (co-sponsored by John Warner (R-VA) and Joe Lieberman (confused-CT)) calls for limiting emissions to 2005 levels by 2012, 30% below 2005 leves by 2030, and finally reducing emissions by 74% by 2050. With present population growth accounted for, that would mean that by 2050, per capita greenhouse gas emissions would be more than 90% less than what they are presently, which–according to one commentator who I unfortunately cannot recall in order to cite at this point–would reduce per capita emissions to a level not seen since around the time Thomas Jefferson was president.

The economic costs of the central planning will obviously be imense. Low-end estimates like that of the Energy Information Administration estimate the costs to economic output at somewhere between $1 and 2 trillion by 2030 (in 2000 dollars) while other estimates, like that of the Heritage Foundation, expect losses up to $4.8 trillion (in 2006 dollars) by 2030.

This cannot even account for the potential deadweight losses and stifled innovation that will result from the massive politicization and bureaucratization of economic planning. Its a wonder how an economy that runs on 85% fossil fuel could cope with such massive overhaul.

While it is a positive to see these massive regulations thwarted, the real battle will come in the next four years when we know we will have a president who supports a Cap-and-Trade scheme. And with a Congress that will likely have even greater Democratic majorities there should be a real worry for those who actually value the idea of economic freedom and remotely limited government. The coming years will really test whether Congressional Republicans (as few as they are) and the American people are willing to go the distance to prevent what the minority leader, I think, correctly calls “the largest restructuring of the American economy since the New Deal.”