If we've learned anything in recent weeks, it's that Rep. John Shimkus is not a reliable source
on climate change science or energy legislation. Yet the Collinsville
Republican keeps trying out new arguments to dissuade Americans from
supporting common-sense environmental regulations. On Monday, he challenged
241 of his congressional colleagues serving in coal-producing districts
to visit a mine or coal-fired power plant during their Easter recess to
learn the effect cap-and-trade legislation would have on the industry.
He also chatted with the folks at WGIL radio about the purported "hidden costs" such a bill would push onto taxpayers:
He says if Democrats are successful at passing the carbon tax proposal, individual homeowners could pay as much as $3,100 a year in additional taxes.
If you've heard that number before, it's because House Minority Leader John Boehner, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, and nine other Republicans have used it to attack cap-and-trade in recent days. Unfortunately, the $3,100 figure is blatantly false, as Think Progress documented.
Shimkus and company got this number from a 2007 MIT report (PDF), which examined similar proposals to the one Barack Obama favors and concluded that a cap-and-trade bill would raise roughly $366 billion in revenue per year. Republicans then took that figure and crudely divided it by the number of households in America, getting approximately $3,100 per family. "It's just wrong," John Reilly, one of the authors of the report, told Politifact. "It's wrong in so many ways it's hard to begin."
What's the actual tax burden? The MIT professors found that a single filer would pay an additional $31 extra each year while a family would pay an extra $79. Also of note: These increases wouldn’t surface until 2015. And if the pollution permits are auctioned off and consumers receive rebates in return, low-income taxpayers wouldn't feel a thing, except a more secure planet. That's a far cry from Shimkus' "$3,100."
Worst of all, Reilly says a House Republican staffer at one point called him to clarify his research but neglected to use his answers. "I had explained why the estimate they had was probably incorrect and what they should do to correct it," he says, "but I think this wrong number was already floating around by that time."
This isn't the first time Shimkus has intentionally fudged numbers to protect carbon-intensive industries from regulation. While promoting their Energy VISION Act last summer, he and fellow GOP Rep. Peter Roskam grossly distorted the U.S Energy Information Agency's estimates of the amount of offshore oil.
It sure would be nice if the reporters at WGIL, the Illinois Radio Network, and other local outlets looked into his statements before reprinting them.
Comments
Flylow (not verified) on Thu, 04/23/2009 - 19:19
President Obama says that his CO2 tax will raise about $650B in 8 years. That works out to about $694 per family per year. However the deputy director of the White House National Economic Council, Jason Furman, is giving us a glimpse at the real number, telling Senate staff the energy tax scheme would actually raise “two-to-three times” the budget’s official $646 billion revenue estimate. So, that makes the number around $2000 per family. This is just the tax, which some people will get back in tax rebates. Business, apparently, would not, so the cost of everything made in the US would go up, essentially a hidden tax. There will be a huge increase in the cost of energy due to a change to low carbon sources. Coal is now the cheapest (after hydro), but would be largely phased out, or would require capture technologies that would roughly double the cost. Alternate sources are up to twice the cost of coal derived power. Therefore, the end consumer price will be much higher, even after the tax rebate. How much depends on the cost of production of power, which should be declining, but is not known with any certainty. The cost quoted in the article of $79 per year is obviously fiction. It is simply not possible to drastically alter the way we generate power without significantly increassing costs. Whether that cost is paid by the residential customer, or hidden in the cost of goods and services, is immaterial. Something else to consider is the damage the power cost increase will do to our global competitiveness. Unless there is also a rebate for exported goods, we can kiss industry goodby and plan to revert to the stone age because there will no longer by any manufacturing in the US.
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