Congressman Bob Barr, the 2008 Libertarian presidential nominee, takes a look at Barack Obama’s proposed "cap and trade" $1.9 trillion National Energy Tax in his weekly column for The Atlanta Journal-Constitution.
Click here to read Barr’s column. Barr writes, in part:
…Its 1,200 pages must rank among the most complex and convoluted pieces of legislation ever devised, making old, Soviet-style government edicts appear streamlined by comparison.
Former President Jimmy Carter, who oversaw the last formal effort Washington undertook to mandate comprehensive energy usage, was a novice compared to the heavy-handed, global-oriented approach by Obama and his Democratic colleagues in the House. Where Carter, a generation ago, was content to turn down the thermostat and lecture the country while wearing a cardigan sweater in front of a warmly glowing fireplace, Obama uses 21st-century communications tools and offers to change not just America’s energy system, but the entire world’s —- with taxpayer dollars by the trillions…
…This discussion barely scratches the surface of the Byzantine system of mandates and favors that would be doled out by the government if this legislation reaches Obama’s desk. The cost is impossible to calculate, except to know it will be in the trillions of dollars. For a plan based on bad science and proposing to implement a model that’s already failed in Europe, that’s a price no responsible American ought to accept. But, how can you put a pricetag on saving the world and all of mankind?
