Obama Budget Assumes Revenues From Cap and Trade

clipped from thehill.com The budget drafted by the Obama administration assumes for the first time ever revenues from a cap-and-trade system designed to curb carbon dioxide emissions to reduce the threat of global warming. Under such a system, polluters could buy and sell allowances on an open market to meet emissions targets. Obama will call for 2005 emissions levels to be reduced by 14 percent by 2020 and by 83 percent by 2050, according to a senior official at the Office of Management and Budget (OMB). In total, the budget assumes revenues of around $645 billion by 2019 to federal coffers through the program, although only $237 billion of that would be available by 2012.

Of course, green ideas like this aren't without their coal-black critics.

House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-Ohio) criticized the proposal as a “tax increase on energy.”

“ ‘Cap-and-trade’ is code for increasing taxes, killing American jobs and raising energy costs for consumers,” Boehner said in a statement. “Middle-class families are struggling during this recession, and the last thing they need is even higher costs of living and weaker job security, which is exactly what ‘cap-and-trade’ would deliver.”

All BS. Cap and trade would not only create new markets, but new industries and new technologies. But that's not conservatism -- conservatism means that everything must remain unchanged forever.

Even if the way you're doing things now is stupid as all hell.