Silicon Investor (SI) -- The First Internet Community

STOCKTALK

We've detected that you're using an ad content blocking browser plug-in or feature. Ads provide a critical source of revenue to the continued operation of Silicon Investor. We ask that you disable ad blocking while on Silicon Investor in the best interests of our community. If you are not using an ad blocker but are still receiving this message, make sure your browser's tracking protection is set to the 'standard' level.

Politics : Just the Facts, Ma'am: A Compendium of Liberal Fiction -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: TimF who wrote (77207)	2/2/2010 8:35:00 PM
From: Sully-	1 Recommendation Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 90947

Obama's 2011 budget will include phantom cap-and-trade revenue By: Mark Tapscott Editorial Page Editor beltway-confidential 01/29/10 6:29 PM EST A trade publication is reporting this afternoon that President Obama's 2011 federal budget proposal will assume receipt of billions of dollars in revenue generated from the cap-and-trade program even though that proposal appears now to be all but dead in Congress. "The White House told Sen. John Kerry's office that the president plans to assume revenue from the controversial climate policy approach. Kerry aides said they had assurances the revenue won't be designated for issues unrelated to energy policy and combating climate change. "Obama last year proposed in his fiscal 2010 budget that a cap-and-trade program would raise some $650 billion over 10 years via a full auction of emission credits, with the money primarily going to pay for middle-class tax cuts and development and deployment of clean energy technologies," Energy and Environment News senior reporter Darren Samuelson wrote in the publication that is subscription-only. Obama repeated during his State of the Union address Wednesday evening his hope that Congress would pass the energy reform bill that featues as its anti-global warming centerpiece establishment of a cap-and-trade program of government credits for carbon emissions reductions that businesses would buy and sell. The proposal's main Senate co-sponsors are Sen. Barbara Boxer, the California Democrat who is chairman of the Environment and Public Works Committee, and Kerry, the Massachusetts Democrat. A similar bill co-sponsored by Representatives Henry Waxman of California and Ed Markey of Massachusetts was approved by the House last year. The House bill projects cap-and-trade revenues of $873 billion. Whether it's the $650 billion projected by the Senate bill or the $873 billion of the House bill, it appears highly unlikely, to put it charitably, that either measure will make it to Obama's desk with the cap-and-trade program intact. That means Obama will be counting phantom revenue as part of his next federal budget proposal. But then Obama's $787 billion economic stimulus program has produced two million phantom jobs located in phantom zip codes in phantom congressional districts, so perhaps nobody should be surprised to see phantom revenues in a White House budget proposal. washingtonexaminer.com

To: TimF who wrote (77207)	2/2/2010 9:18:19 PM
From: Sully-	Respond to of 90947

Meet the 'ram-it-through caucus' By: David Freddoso Online Opinion Editor beltway-confidential 02/02/10 1:32 PM EST According to the liberal group Whip Congress, 96 Democrats in the House have signed a letter demanding that a health insurance reform bill be passed through the budget reconciliation process. Such a scheme -- a fairly straightforward abuse of the congressional budget system established in the Nixon era -- would require only 51 Senate votes for ObamaCare to become law. By my count, few of the 96 signing Democrats have any serious chance of losing an election (Paul Tonko, NY, and John Yarmuth, Ky.). The rest would suffer little from the electoral tsunami that would come in reaction to any such attempt at ramming health reform through Congress now. The letter is the brianchild of liberal Democrat Reps. Jared Polis, Colo., and Chellie Pingree, Maine. UPDATE: I had not noticed earlier that there were a few other potentially vulnerable Democrats who signed the letter, including Mark Schauer, Mich., Alan Grayson, Fla., Carol Shea-Porter, N.H., and Scott Murphy, N.Y. Their opponents for the fall should take note that when the voters signaled clear disgust with ObamaCare, they tried to abuse reconciliation and push it through anyway. washingtonexaminer.com