Waxman-Markey Grows by 300 Pages in a Week!

Like a snowball that gains momentum down a steep hillside, the Waxman-Markey Clean Energy and Security Act (a.k.a “energy tax”) keeps getting bigger and fatter and more dangerous as it works its way through the Democratic caucus to a vote before the full House by the end of the week.

Consider: In only the past seven days, the text of the bill has grown by 300 pages!

Part of the added girth comes from powerful committees that have partial jurisdiction over the bill, and their input has been uniformly awful.

Originally, the Clean Energy and Security Act was designed to tax energy in order to reduce greenhouse gas emissions thought to cause so-called global warming, but Democrats on the Agriculture Committee negotiated pro-ethanol provisions into the legislation, which made a bad bill worse. By forcing Americans to use ever more corn-fuel in their gas tanks, the Congress raises grocery bills (by increasing the price of food) and gives drivers more pain at the pump (ethanol is more expensive that gas). So now Americans face the prospect of an energy tax for so-called global warming, plus an ethanol tax on food and fuel, all in the same bill.

The bill is likely to become even more harmful when the Ways and Means Committee weighs in. The members of that influential Committee want to add language that would force the President to impose carbon tariffs on imports from developing countries such as China and India. They would undoubtedly retaliate with tariffs on imports from American manufacturers. History informs us that a trade war would inflict severe damage on a global economy that is already ailing.

Many of the added pages to the Clean Energy and Security Act result from the House leadership’s aggressive push to buy off members of the Democratic Party with the hundreds of billions of dollars in energy taxes that the federal government would reap from the cap-and-trade energy rationing scheme in the legislation. It’s politically dangerous for many Democratic moderates to vote for an energy tax, so leadership has to make it worth their while. These giveaways and favors, of course, come at the expense of American taxpayer.

And the bill continues to grow, because House leadership still hasn’t accumulated enough votes to pass the bill. There are more people to buy off, more pages to write, and more money to take from Americans.