Rep. Doggett on Waxman-Markey: “I Cannot Support It.”

06/26/2009 by Charles Komanoff

Following is the statement delivered by Rep. Lloyd Doggett during today’s House floor debate on the Waxman-Markey “American Clean Energy and Security Act of 2009” (H.R. 2454, or “ACESA”). Rep. Doggett, a Democrat, has represented Texas’s 25th CD (central Texas, including Austin) since 1995, and is a senior member of the House Ways and Means Committee.

This energy bill’s fine print betrays its laudable purpose. The real cap is on the public interest and the trade is the billions from the public to polluters. It is too weak to greatly spur new technologies and green jobs.  An Administration analysis shows that doing nothing actually results in more new renewable electricity generation capacity than approving this bill.

lloyd_doggett_jrwolivet

Vital authority for the EPA is stripped, but 2 billion additional tons of pollution are authorized every year, forever.  Residential-consumer protection incredibly is entrusted to the mercy of utility companies.  Exempting a hundred new coal plants and paying billions to Old King Coal leaves him, indeed, a very merry old soul.

This bill is 85% different from what President Obama proposed months ago.  No wonder his Budget Director called this type of bill ‘the largest corporate welfare program in the history of the United  States.’

Until greatly improved, until families share in the billions this bill grants powerful lobbies, I cannot support it.

(Click here to view a video of Rep. Doggett’s floor statement. Other CTC posts immediately prior to this present more detailed critiques of the Waxman-Markey bill.)

Photo: Flickr / jrwolivet.

Filed under Cap-and-Trade, Carbon Tax, Politics

6 Comments »

  1. Later, Congressman Doggett reversed himself. He now supports HR 2454 — because, he said, of the “inane arguments” coming from the “flat-earthers” across the aisle.

    Comment by Chris Winter — June 26, 2009 @ 5:55 pm

  2. The chances that Congressman Doggett read this monstrosity with its elephantine 300-page 3 AM add-ons seem slim. Satellite data indicates 10 years of global cooling accompanying increased CO2 emmissions, little of which increase is US caused. The “FLAT-EARTHER” is you, Congressman-you don’t believe in your own satellites. You are far worse than inane, and you will be defeated by the Senate, if working AMERICANS CAN HAVE tHEIR WAY. WE NEED NUCLEAR POWER, ANTIMISSILE DEFENSE, AND USE OF US OIL and coal techno. You are hurting the people you claim to represent, especially the poor.

    Comment by Terence Smith — June 26, 2009 @ 11:30 pm

  3. If a camel is a horse designed by committee, this climate bill is like a bowline or square not designed by special interests and their lobbyist hacks — a gordian knot. It has been twisted and twined in every way imaginable to make it beautiful in the eyes of the special interests. As far as providing any nourishment for climate-ameliorative forces, it is at best a very thin gruel.

    Let us hope that leadership will emerge, to cut the gordian knot with the carbon tax as Alexandrian sword.

    Comment by David Collins — June 29, 2009 @ 3:07 pm

  4. On July 1, the Washington Post published the following letter to the editor by Greg Ebel, President and CEO of Spectra Energy Corp., which operates natural gas pipelines and gas processing, storage and distribution facilities.

    Moving Toward a Greener Economy

    The June 26 editorial “Waxman-Markey” was right to push policymakers toward a better alternative to cap-and-trade emissions policy for addressing climate change. A straightforward, predictable carbon tax would present less room for manipulation while encouraging carbon emissions reductions.

    The best carbon tax would be revenue-neutral, attaching a penalty to what we want less of (carbon emissions) while encouraging what we want more of (jobs, technological innovation and efficiency). Such a fee would directly and visibly assess the true costs associated with emissions and drive behavioral change quickly.

    A tax doesn’t create artificial scarcity, monopolies or rents. Without the profit potential of amassing tradeable carbon permits, industries would less incentive to try to get credits for their favored but non-competitive energy sources. That would be the likely result of the cap-and-trade bill moving through Congress.

    What’s more, a cap-and-trade system can be gamed. The financial derivatives associated with emissions credits would be traded in a new, hugely complex, multitrillion-dollar carbon market. Instead of turning our environment over to the traders who brought the financial system to its knees, we’d be wise to develop a far simpler system for addressing carbon emissions.

    GREG EBEL

    Comment by James Handley — July 2, 2009 @ 6:57 pm

  5. Waxman’s & Markey’s Cap’n Trade bill was twisted, turned, condimented and roasted to appease representatives who had no interest in the purpose of the bill — mitigating Global Warming — let alone in the effectiveness of the bill.

    Those aforementioned representatives are ignorant of more than climate science and economics. They are ignorant of pretty much everything except their personal careers and their egos. It is wise to consider the advice in the Good Book, specifically Matthew 7:6, “…neither cast ye your pearls before swine, lest they trample them under their feet, and turn again and rend you.” The last two clauses are a pretty apt description of what those aforementioned representatives have been and are doing.

    The swine belong in the pigpens, not in the halls of Congress.

    Comment by David Ocampo — July 3, 2009 @ 7:44 pm

  6. The editorial in THE STATE (July 6), “Inglis, Laffer: A plan conservatives could warm to” shows good thinking. The scary part is the line, “Conservatives do not have to agree that humans are causing climate change to recognize a sensible energy solution.” It is tragic that acknowledgment of anthropogenic global warming is a partisan issue, that your political views bespeak your science views, that science theories are “beliefs” on a par with the Confession of Augsburg.

    Nevertheless, it is great to see it stated, plainly and clearly, that it is okay for Conservatives to support the Carbon Tax.

    Comment by David Ocampo — July 6, 2009 @ 11:36 am

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