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News-Sentinel.com Your Town. Your Voice.
Opening Arguments

The hits just keep on coming

Well, here it comes:

Sens. John Kerry (D-Mass.) and Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.) will release long-awaited climate and energy legislation today that reflects eight months of closed-door negotiations with Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), while still leaving wide open additional room for changes as they search for the magic 60 votes.

Coming in at just under 1,000 pages, the bill includes 12 titles covering a cross section of the nation's top environmental and energy issues . . .

[. . .]

The Kerry-Lieberman legislation will call for a 17 percent reduction in carbon pollution from 2005 levels by 2020; 42 percent by 2030 and 83 percent by 2050. Power plants will face the first restrictions, followed six years later by energy-intensive manufacturers.

Transportation emissions will be regulated under the national carbon cap, though under a separate trading program. Producers and importers of refined petroleum products also will be kept out of the carbon market, but they still must purchase allowances at a fixed price from the allowance auction.

It's impossible, of course, to say what all of this means -- that's the plan, actually; that's why these monstrosities always have to be at least 1,000 pages. We can only be sure that it will cost more than advertised, be more intrusive than claimed and have more unintended consequences than we can imagine: "The actual provisions are not yet available, but this analysis initially looks like a bit of an improvement on the Rube Goldbergesque carbon rationing horror that the House of Representatives passed last summer."

Oh, and this just in:

The director of the Congressional Budget Office said Tuesday that the health care reform legislation would cost, over the next ten years, $115 billion more than previously thought, bringing the total cost to more than $1 trillion.

Wow, there's a shock,

Comments

tim zank
Wed, 05/12/2010 - 3:59pm

How can there be anyone left out there that doesn't see this financial train wreck for what it is?

We are soooo farked.

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