Boucher: Energy Bill Will Not Cost Anyone Their Jobs, Including Coal Miners
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Boucher: Energy Bill Will Not Cost Anyone Their...
Less than two weeks after voting in favor of the American Clean Energy and Security Act, Rep. Rick Boucher (D-VA-9th District) defended his vote Tuesday. The commonly called ?Cap and Trade Bill? narro...
Nate Morabito/11 Connects
Less than two weeks after voting in favor of the American Clean Energy and Security Act, Rep. Rick Boucher (D-VA-9th District) defended his vote Tuesday. The commonly called “Cap and Trade Bill” narrowly passed the U.S. House of Representatives last month. Senate debate is expected in the fall. Boucher is one of 219 representatives who voted in favor of the legislation.
Proponents claim the act will reduce emissions of green house gases, increase the country’s use of green power, and decrease dependence on foreign oil. Opponents say it will dramatically drive up the price of everything from gasoline to electricity to the cost of selling your home. Some also fear it will cost millions of jobs. However, Boucher says there is minimal cost when it comes to the legislation.
“The cost of this program when it is fully implemented in the middle years of the next decade would be less than the cost of a postage stamp per day for the typical American family,“ Boucher said.
Boucher also says the bill he endorsed won’t eliminate a single job.
“There will be no job loss as a consequence of this legislation,“ Boucher said. “As a matter of fact, when this measure is signed into law, it will be a job creator.“
In addition to the creation of millions of green jobs, Boucher says the coal market will grow too.
“According to the Environmental Protection Agency, coal use will be greater under this bill in 2020 than it is at the present time,“ Boucher said.
Those expectations are to hard to believe for some. Alpha Natural Resources will soon become the third largest coal producing company in the United States. Located in Boucher’s backyard of Abingdon, Virginia, the company admits it still has its concerns about the energy bill.
“With what Congressman Boucher was able to get changed in the original proposal out of the House, it’s much more acceptable to the industry than it would have been,“ Alpha Natural Resources Chairman and CEO Mike Quillen said.
Despite that praise, Quillen says the legislation still remains unacceptable.
“We are very concerned that there could be significant job losses in the coal industry,“ he said.
That is especially concerning for Alpha Natural Resources and its 6,500 employees (1,200 of those employees are in Southwest Virginia). Quillen says his employees have already shared their fears. As it stands right now, Quillen doubts the coal industry can reduce emissions without reducing coal production, meaning people will lose their jobs.
“Our analysis is there’s probably going to be about 2.2 jobs lost for every ‘green’ job created,“ Quillen said.
Still even with those concerns, Boucher insists coal miners have nothing to worry about.
“There will be no job loss associated with this measure,“ Boucher said.
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Q: How do you know if a politician is lying?
A: His/her lips are moving.
The president talks about how the new cap and trade bill is going to create a couple of hundred thousand jobs. What he doesn’t talk about is that the bill will kill 3 million jobs. That’s an estimate from the Congressional Budget Office. Look at what happened in Spain if you are in doubt.
In addition, lawmakers are on camera telling the people that there will be rebates for the poor to help defray the costs of this new bill. They do acknowledge that this bill will hurt the lowest income people the most. Again from the CBO, they are planning on reimbursing $161 per year for a single person household earning under $23,000 and up to $359 for a household with at least two children whose household income is less than $42,000.
Analysts from all business sectors estimate that the costs per household for this Cap and Trade Bill will average $2,000 to $4,000 per year. The American Petroleum Institute has stated that the bill will raise the price of gasoline above $4 per gallon at current crude prices. So if you receive the maximum rebate from the government for this bill, it will buy you 90 gallons of gasoline. If you get 30 miles per gallon, that’s less than 3,000 miles you can drive in a year on the rebate. That is 8.2 miles per day. Then there would still be higher electricity costs to pay, higher costs for food, and higher heat bills.
This bill is touted as necessary to help heal global warming, however the best case estimates for this additional burden on the American public is a net lowering of the global temperature by one hundredth of one degree in the next 20 to 50 years. That is if everything the politicians have envisioned works as planned.
Farming is expected to be particularly hard hit by this bill since farming is energy intensive. The Waxman-Markey Cap and Trade Bill will put American farmers at a global disadvantage as other food-exporting nations would have no comparable energy price raising measures in place.
Likewise, every energy-using American company will pay much more for it than their counterparts in competing countries, including Brazil, China, and India. The lower cost of energy elsewhere will result in the exprting of American jobs on a scale not seen before.
Are we all idiots now?
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