Bond: The American People Deserve Answers on the Costs of Democrats’ Cap and Trade Bill to Family Budgets, Lost Jobs

Bond:  The American People Deserve Answers
on the Costs of Democrats’ Cap and Trade Bill to Family Budgets, Lost
Jobs

            WASHINGTON,
D.C. – U.S. Senator Kit Bond today called on Democrats to tell the American
people the truth about the cost of their cap and trade legislation to family
budgets and lost jobs.

            “The American people and my Missouri constituents
deserve to know how the legislation we consider will impose new energy taxes
upon them, kill their jobs, punish the Midwest and South, help China and India,
and construct a new bureaucratic nightmare to implement a carbon cap and trade
program,” said Bond.                             

            At today’s Senate Environment and Public Works
Committee hearing on global warming legislative tools, Bond stressed that the
American people deserve to know the truth about the Democrats’ costly cap and
trade bill.  The Democrats’ lack of transparency has made it difficult for the
American people to get straight answers.  Bond pointed to the recent House
passage of a 1,472–page cap and trade bill and the confusion over the final
legislative language.  In total, the Democrats produced 6,706 pages – or 15
inches – of legislative material in their consideration of carbon cap and trade
legislation.  Even worse, more than 300 pages were added at 3 AM in a committee
hearing before the final vote on the House floor – leaving little time for any
member to even read the entire legislative package.

            “The American people and my Missouri constituents
deserve to know why it takes 1,427 pages to address energy issues.  What needles
are the Majority trying to hide in this haystack?  What backroom deals were made
to buy support?  What provisions were added in the middle of the night?  How
will the bureaucratic nightmare this bill creates work?” asked
Bond.

            Unfortunately, if signed into law the Democrats’
costly proposal will be no clearer to the American people.  Instead, the
legislative proposal creates a bureaucratic nightmare with the Environment
Protection Agency (EPA) at the center of a great web of government mandates,
programs and taxes.  EPA will have help from nearly 2 dozen other federal
agencies implementing government programs that will tax and spend trillions of
dollars.  This web of bureaucracy is so massive the chart Bond used at today’s
hearing had to be held by two staffers. 

            Even worse for the American people than dealing
with Washington bureaucrats will be the high costs these bureaucrats impose on
them.  Bond emphasized that particularly families in the Midwest and the South
will face higher power, cooling, and heating bills; higher food prices;
higher gasoline prices; and lost jobs.  

            Bond called on his Democratic colleagues to quit
trying to obscure these costs that will be imposed on the American people and to
hold Congressional hearings on the actual text of the legislation Democrats want
to be signed into law. 

The Senator’s entire statement
before the EPW Committee, bureaucratic maze chart, and photo of the 15-inches of
legislative materials can be found here.

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