Pelosi’s Cap-and-Trade Energy Tax: Skyrocketing Costs, Disappearing Jobs, Struggling Economy All for Nothing?

•Under Obama and Pelosi’s proposed energy tax – known as “cap and trade” – every American family would pay more when they turn on the lights, set their thermostat, or fill up with gasoline.

•As a candidate for president, then-Senator Obama admitted, “Under my plan of a cap-and-trade system, electricity rates would necessarily skyrocket.”

•Since energy is used to make and provide other goods and services, Americans would see higher costs across the board. Recent studies show that these “indirect” energy costs are nearly as high as “direct” energy costs of gasoline, electricity, and home heating fuel. The director of the Congressional Budget Office testified it was unlikely any product’s price would stay the same.

•In testimony before Congress in April 2008 Peter Orszag said: “Under a cap-and-trade program, firms would not ultimately bear most of the costs of the allowances but instead would pass them along to their customers in the form of higher prices…price increases would be essential to the success of a cap and trade program.”

•The CBO has projected that gross costs of compliance would go up an average of $890 per household (some will go up by $1,380) in 2020, one of the lowest cost years in the program. And that figure did not include any costs from a slowing economy or transition costs.

•A report by the Food and Agricultural Policy Research Institute found that a typical 1,900 acre corn, soybean and wheat farm in Missouri could see increased costs of $11,649 in 2015 and $30,152 in 2050.