Let’s hope the Senate can think its way out of a paper bag…..

The House has passed (barely) Nancy Pelosi’s vision for a better world – the Waxman-Markey energy bill. I won’t belabor the technicals imbedded in this whopper, but some commentary on the sales job undertaken by our rules-makers needs to be made. Essentially the supporters of this tax bill have positioned the global climate issue as a US generated, man-made problem. We are to take at face value the proposition that imposing significant mandatory CO2 emission cuts on our society alone will begin to solve the alleged global warming problem (let’s just ignore that pesky issue of all that belching smog in the developing world). And, amazingly, this huge imposition on our wealth and lifestyle will actually create jobs!!!... millions and millions of them, by golly.

The fascinating thing here is that seemingly intelligent people make this pitch and seemingly intelligent people (some) actually catch it. Mind-boggling. It’s a wonder that reasonable minds can believe the notion that we can actually tax our way to prosperity. The only (loose) analogy that I can come up with was the New Deal, where government spent because there literally was no alternative. We managed to put food on the table through this transfer program, but I don’t really recall any long term industrial benefit derived. It should be clear that the unilateral imposition of an additional cost/tax burden on our industrial base will make us even less competitive globally. Taxation and increased government intervention is and always will be a job killer.