Cap and trade is going to cost you a bazillion dollars annually -- maybe a kajillion. No one really knows. Back in April, House minority leader John Boehner took a wild stab at it and came up with a figure of $3,128 annually for the average household. That's right, people backing cap and trade think that adding three grand to your annual energy bill is a good idea that'll get them reelected. Hahaha! Let's all laugh at them.How do Republicans arrive at the $3,100 dollar figure? It’s pretty simple. We took MIT’s own estimate of a key “cap-and-trade” bill from the 110th Congress (S. 309) cosponsored by then-Senator Obama that said S. 309 would generate $366 billion in revenues in 2015. S. 309’s emissions targets track the emissions targets outlined in Obama’s budget, which the Congressional Research Service has confirmed. We took MIT’s own number – $366 billion – and divided that by the number of U.S. households (we assumed 300 million people and an average household size of 2.56 people…which is 117 million households). Using this formula, you get roughly $3,000 per household ($3,128 using current Census figures, a little less if you use projected Census figures from 2015). Now, this doesn’t even account for costs resulting from higher prices for food and all other products that will cost more to produce under their program.
Simple! Of course, Boehner had to admit to a little hitch in the GOP reasoning; "An MIT professor has questions about the $3,100 figure but his letter makes assumptions that are factually inaccurate." This was the MIT professor -- John Reilly -- who Boehner got his figures from in the first place. To dig up an old folk-saying, Boehner was trying to teach his grandmother to suck eggs... [CLICK TO READ FULL POST]
