Obama Admin: Alternate Cap And Trade Method Could Have Cost Families $1,761 A Year

[Regis Philbin]

How about it, America? Got an extra $1,700 lying around?

I love how they put the word "could" in there---as in "might". The actual figure COULD be much higher...and probably will. :nod:

http://sweetness-light.com/archive/wh-carbon-tax-to-cost-1761-a-year

WH: Carbon Tax To Cost $1,761 A Year

From, of all places, CBS News:

Obama Admin: Cap And Trade Could Cost Families $1,761 A Year

September 15, 2009

The Obama administration has privately concluded that a cap and trade law would cost American taxpayers up to $200 billion a year, the equivalent of hiking personal income taxes by about 15 percent.

A previously unreleased analysis prepared by the U.S. Department of Treasury says the total in new taxes would be between $100 billion to $200 billion a year. At the upper end of the administration’s estimate, the cost per American household would be an extra $1,761 a year.

A second memorandum, which was prepared for Obama’s transition team after the November election, says this about climate change policies: "Economic costs will likely be on the order of 1 percent of GDP, making them equal in scale to all existing environmental regulation."

The documents (PDF) were obtained under the Freedom of Information Act by the free-market Competitive Enterprise Institute and released on Tuesday.

[Richard Tafoya]

One blogger who doesn't do his homework and the right gets their panties all twisted up.

From the Washington Post:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/09/16/AR2009091603524.html
A CBS News blogger named Declan McCullagh seized on the documents, which CEI obtained through a Freedom of Information Act request, and said: "The Obama administration has privately concluded that a cap and trade law would cost American taxpayers up to $200 billion a year, the equivalent of hiking personal income taxes by about 15 percent." He added: "At the upper end of the administration's estimate, the cost per American household would be an extra $1,761 a year."

But environmental organizations fired back that McCullagh and the CEI were making two key false assumptions. In the auction plan initially proposed by President Obama, revenue from cap-and-trade allowances would have been used to cut taxes. Many economists, including those who are Republican, have argued that using such revenue to cut payroll taxes would be good for the economy. Second, the plan in the March Treasury memo is not the one being debated in Congress.


"Even if a 100 percent auction was a live legislative proposal, which it's not, that math ignores the redistribution of revenue back to consumers," said Tony Kreindler, spokesman for the Environmental Defense Fund. "It only looks at one side of the balance sheet. It would only be true if you think the administration was going to pile all the cash on the White House lawn and set it on fire."