Debate Over Warming Bill Heats Up
President Bush has already threatened to veto the Lieberman-Warner Climate Security Act that the Senate began debating yesterday afternoon. Bush voiced his opposition at a meeting on tax cuts saying that the legislation would create $6 trillion in new costs. "I urge the Congress to be very careful about running up enormous costs for future generations of Americans," he said.
"We'll work with the Congress, but the idea of a huge spending bill fueled by tax increases isn't the right way to proceed," he said.
According to the Energy Information Administration, the Senate bill could reduce economic growth by 0.2 to 0.6 percent of the GDP, with the electric power industry hit the hardest. It also found that gas prices could rise by 22 to 49 cents by 2030. But some argue that this increase in gas prices would be over the course of two decades, and we've seen a much larger increase over the past six months.
Manik Roy of the Pew Center on Global Climate Change says that this bill will ensure "continued robust growth."
The Congressional Budget Office says the bill is deficit neutral. "I am pleased," said co-sponsor Sen. John Warner (R-Va.), "that my colleagues and I were able to devise a tweak to our bill that allows the Congressional Budget Office to find that passage of this bill will come at no cost to the federal government."
Although the bill does list measures to contain costs, the World Resources Institute has found that if all these measures are enforced, the result could be little or no reductions in greenhouse gas emissions.
And, as Mike and several others report, these could all be moot points, since the bill may be doomed this year anyway.
Be the first to comment