The Biggest Economic Mistake Since The Days Of Herbert Hoover
The Biggest Economic Mistake Since The Days Of Herbert Hoover
Rep. McClintock gave the following floor speech in opposition to the Cap and
Trade legislation on June 26, 2009.
I had a strange sense of Deja Vu as I watched the self-congratulatory
rhetoric on the house floor tonight, and I feel compelled to offer this
warning from the Left Coast.
Three years ago, I stood on the floor of the California Senate and watched a
similar celebration over a similar bill, AB 32. And I have spend the last
three years watching as that law has dangerously deepened California's
recession. It uses a different mechanism than Cap and Trade, but the
objective is the same: to force a dramatic reduction in carbon dioxide
emissions.
Up until that bill took effect, California's unemployment numbers tracked
very closely with the national unemployment rate. But then in January of
2007, California's unemployment rate began a steady upward divergence from
the national jobless figures. Today, California's unemployment rate is more
than two points above the national rate, and at its highest point since
1941.
What is it that happened in January of 2007? AB 32 took effect and began
shutting down entire segments of California's economy. Let me give you one
example from my district. The City of Truckee, California was about to sign
a long-term power contract to get its electricity from a new, EPA-approved
coal-fired electricity plant in Utah. AB 32 and companion legislation
caused them to abandon that contract. The replacement power they acquired
literally doubled their electricity costs.
So when economists warn that we can expect electricity prices to double
under the cap and trade bill, I can tell you from bitter experience that in
my district, that's not a future prediction, that is an historical fact.
Gov. Schwarzenegger assured us that AB 32 would mean an explosion of new,
green jobs -- exactly the same promises we're hearing from cap and trade
supporters. In California, exactly the opposite has happened. We have lost
so many jobs that the UCSB economic forecast is now using the D-word -
Depression - to discuss California's job market.
M. Speaker, the Cap and Trade bill proposes what amounts to endlessly
increasing taxes on any enterprises that produce carbon dioxide or other
so-called greenhouse gas emissions. We need to understand what that means.
It has profound implications for agriculture, construction, cargo and
passenger transportation, energy production, baking and brewing - all of
which produce enormous quantities this innocuous and ubiquitous compound.
In fact, every human being produces 2.2 pounds of carbon dioxide every day -
just by breathing.
So applying a tax to the economy designed to radically constrict carbon
dioxide emissions means radically constricting the economy.
And this brings us to the fine point of it.
When you discuss the folly of the Hoover Administration - how it turned the
recession of 1929 into the depression of the 1930's, the first thing that
economists point to is the Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act that imposed new taxes on
over 20,000 imported products.
Waxman Markey is our generation's Smoot Hawley. In fact, it's worse because
it imposes new taxes on an infinitely larger number of domestic products on
a scale that utterly dwarfs Smoot-Hawley.
Let's ignore for the moment the fact that the planet's climate is constantly
changing and that long term global warming has been going on since the last
ice age. Let's ignore the fact that within recorded history we know of
periods when the earth's climate has been much warmer than it is today and
others when it has been much cooler. Let's ignore the thousands of climate
scientists and meteorologists who have concluded that human-produced
greenhouse gases are a negligible factor in global warming or climate
change.
Ignore all of that and still we are left with one lousy sense of timing. In
the most serious recession since the Great Depression - why would members of
this house want to repeat the same mistakes that produced that Great
Depression? Watching how California has just wrecked its economy and
destroyed its finances, why would they want to do the same thing to our
nation?
M. Speaker, this is deadly serious stuff. It transcends ideology and
politics. This House has just made the biggest economic mistake since the
days of Herbert Hoover.
If this measure becomes law, two things are certain.
First, our planet will continue to warm and cool as it has been doing for
billions of years.
Second: Congress will have delivered a staggering blow to our nation's
economy at precisely that moment when that economy was the most vulnerable.
<http://blog.tommcclintock.com/2009/06/29/the-biggest-economic-mistake-since
-the-days-of-herbert-hoover/>
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McClintock for Congress PO Box 1198, Rocklin, CA 95677
www.helptom.com <http://www.helptom.com/> (530) 613-1188 (916) 446-1246
Paid for by McClintock for Congress
Tom Mcclintock for Congress. www.tommcclintock.com
PO Box 1198
Rocklin,CA 95677
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