The bill is House Resolution 2454, imposing a domestic carbon emissions cap-and-trade program on the American economy.
The goal seems to be nothing short of eradicating American farms and self-sustainability.
Even DEMOCRATS are opposing the Obama Energy Bill. Climate change legislation will be utterly devastating for American farmers. Rep. Leonard Boswell (D-IA) of the House Agriculture Committee says that not only will he not vote for it, but no one else on his committee will support it either. The bill would increase the cost of everything that farmers depend on, such as diesel fuel, gasoline, fertilizers, pesticides, and a host of other things. It would raise taxes on energy by $846 billion over the next ten years. Due to the fact that farming is so energy intensive, one major study shows that it would reduce farm income by $8 billion or 28% over the next four years, by $25 billion (or by 60%) through 2024, and by $50 billion (or by 94%) by 2035 [source: Heritage Foundation study]. Many are shaking their heads in amazement over the proposed impact.
Cap and trade legislation would utterly devastate the agricultural community with stratospheric operating costs, and would just as utterly destroy rural America.
To make matters even worse, the 1,000 page bill pushed through by Henry Waxman and Ed Markey has barely been examined in spite of its sweeping consequences as Democrats play cutthroat politics with America’s future.
House Agriculture Committee Chairman Collin Peterson (D-MN) is complaining that the Agriculture Department has little if any role in the climate change bill, and that the EPA is driving it. Peterson said, “A lot of us on the Committee do not want the EPA near our farms.”
Agriculture Department Secy Tom Vilsack repeatedly said, “There is obviously work yet to be done on this bill.”
Nevertheless, Nancy Pelosi is trying to rush the bill through the House, demanding that it be finished by the end of next week – leaving almost no change lawmakers could change it. And Barack Obama is pushing hard to impose his agenda before Americans have a chance to know more about it and oppose it.
The economic aspects are terrible enough:
WASHINGTON, DC, June 9 — A US House bill that would introduce a domestic carbon emissions cap-and-trade program would cost $846 billion in new taxes, the Congressional Budget Office said on June 5. [….]
American Petroleum Institute President Jack N. Gerard said on June 8 that the analysis confirmed the bill would be “massively costly.”
“The $846 billion price tag on emission allowances, borne disproportionately by oil consumers, will drive up costs of producing and refining gasoline, diesel, and other fuel products while doing nothing to protect fuel consumers, including American families, trucking, the airlines, the construction industry, and many other businesses that rely on oil to make or transport products,” Gerard said.
API: ‘A job-killer’
API said that based on allowance costs in CBO’s study, impacts could be as much as 77¢/gal for gasoline, 83¢/gal for jet fuel, and 88¢/gal for diesel fuel.“This is what happens when market-based regulation is abandoned in favor of picking winners and losers,” Gerard said. “Putting most of the burden on one sector also helps explain why this legislation promises to be a job-killer.”
The bill was cosponsored by Reps. Henry A. Waxman (D-Calif.), chairman of the Energy and Commerce Committee, and Edward J. Markey (D-Mass.), chairman of the committee’s Energy and Environment Subcommittee.
But the impact on industries such as farming will be utterly devastating:
For Farmers, Cap and Trade is a Permanent Drought Season
Economists at The Heritage Foundation’s Center for Data Analysis are digging deeper into the effects of the Waxman-Markey climate change legislation that includes a cap and trade plan to reduce carbon dioxide by 17 percent below 2005 levels in 2020 and by 83 percent below 2005 levels in 2050. Today’s victim: Farmers. Our CDA analysts found that Waxman-Markey would adversely affect farmers in a number of ways:
• Farm income (or the amount left over after paying all expenses) is expected to drop $8 billion in 2012, $25 billion in 2024, and over $50 billion in 2035. These are decreases of 28%, 60% and 94%, respectively.
• The average net income lost over the 2010-2035 timeline is $23 billion – a 57% decrease from the baseline.
• Construction costs of farm buildings will go up by 5.5 percent in 2025 and 10 percent by 2034 (from the baseline).
• By 2035, gasoline and diesel costs are expected to be 58 percent higher and electric rates 90 percent higher.
And for the rest of us, including those of us on fixed incomes and already struggling in these tough economic times:
• The cost of producing everything from wheat to beef will increase. Indeed, the price deflator for private farm inventories goes up over 20 points by 2035. This increase gets quickly translated into much higher food prices for consumers at the grocery stores.
Most of our readers know cap and trade is an energy tax in disguise. The goal of cap and trade is to drive up energy costs so much that Americans use less. But there’s a fundamental problem with this. Just about everything we do and everything we consume uses energy, so even after consumers turn up their thermostats in the summer and down in the winter, consumers are still using a lot of energy. But under a cap and trade, they’ll be paying an exorbitantly high price for it.
Farming is no exception; in fact, farming is very energy-intensive, with fuel, chemical, electricity and fertilizer costs. They have to purchase a lot of equipment and have to construct a lot of buildings. The Heritage Foundation’s CDA estimates that the price of constructing farm buildings will go up by 4.5 percent in 2024 and by over 10 percent in 2034 (from the baseline) solely because of the upward pressure cap and trade puts on energy prices.
The price of tractors– and every other piece of farm equipment you can think of– will increase as well.
Worst of all is what happens to farmers’ net income. Farmers live off their gross income; what they earn in addition to that is their net income or marginal income. Waxman-Markey significantly shrinks farmers’ net income pie. Farm income is expected to drop $8 billion in 2012, $25 billion in 2024, and over $50 billion in 2035. These are decreases of 28%, 60% and 94% from the baseline, respectively.
Waxman-Markey increases the costs of farm inventories, which in turn raises the cost of food sold to the consumer. At first glance, this may appear to be a good thing for farmers. Higher prices equals higher profit. But this would only be true if all other things were equal. That’s certainly not the case here. Higher energy prices hurt the overall economy, which means less demand for all goods, less production, higher unemployment, and reduced income. This overall economic slowdown reduces demand for agricultural goods, too. And, as we’ve seen above from the charts, a lot changes for farmers; particularly, their overall cost of operations rise and their net incomes fall.
Waxman-Markey’s effect on farmers should raise a red flag for those in the farm belt and will put U.S. agriculture at a tremendous competitive disadvantage if enacted. Consumers will feel the pain as well, not only from the increase in their own energy prices, but increased food prices. And for what? A change in the temperature too small to notice.
For more, check out The Heritage Foundation’s Rapid Response Page
This won’t just undermine the American farmer; it will force him out of farming altogether.
How is it NOT a truly terrible idea to annihilate America’s ability to feed its own people?
This goes beyond undermining the US economy; it may well literally create starvation conditions for millions of Americans.
Last May, while on the campaign trail, Barack Obama said:
“We can’t drive our SUVs and eat as much as we want and keep our homes on 72 degrees at all times … and then just expect that other countries are going to say OK,” Obama said.
“That’s not leadership. That’s not going to happen,” he added.
And now we see what Obama’s “leadership” looks like: it looks like a bigger version of North Korea. Nationalizing the auto industry and imposing tiny little clown cars on the country; an energy policy that will tax us into freezing in the dark at night (or conversely sweltering in the summer heat); and of course the whole famine thing.
You can’t say he didn’t warn us, I suppose.
Revelation 6:5-6 “When he opened the third seal, I heard the second living creature say, “Come!” And I looked, and behold, a black horse! And its rider had a pair of scales in his hand. And I heard what seemed to be a voice in the midst of the four living creatures, saying, “A quart of wheat for a day’s wage, and three quarts of barley for a day’s wage, and do not harm the oil and wine.”
The beast is coming. That approaching reality is becoming clearer every single day.
Tags: $25 billion, $50 billion, $8 billion, $846 billion, 2024, 2035, 28%, 60%, 94%, agriculture committee, Boswell, cap-and-trade, carbon emissions, climate change, diesel, energy, farmers, farms, fertilizers, fuel, gasoline, Heritage Foundation, HR 2454, income, Markey, revenue, taxes, unemployment, Waxman
Start Thinking Right 
June 13, 2009 at 1:23 pm
Hang on, it’s going to be quit a ride with the administration going at a lightning speed to change our country to one not recognizable. Is this the change wanted?
Dixie Burkhart
Facts Don’t Matter
http://www.eloquentbooks.com/FactsDontMatter.htm
June 13, 2009 at 4:38 pm
“How is it NOT a truly terrible idea to annhilate America’s ability to feed its own people?
This goes beyond undermining the US economy; it may well literally create starvation conditions for millions of Americans.”
I feel as if I am living in a world that has gone stark raving mad.
June 13, 2009 at 5:06 pm
I clicked on the link and saw you hail from southeast Iowa. Many of my own Eden kin live in your neck of the woods.
I see what you see: the United States of America has been turned into a giant game board. The pieces are being moved to attain political – rather than economic or prudent – goals and outcomes. And the board is being tilted so that things “slide” in the direction of a leftist agenda.
That WAS the “change” I saw coming under Obama, from the moment I heard the evil rantings from Obama’s church for 23 years.
There’s a cliff ahead, and we are racing for it.
June 13, 2009 at 5:22 pm
Those words are just MY view based on facts I read and presented.
But if Obama guts the farm industry based on “global warming,” what should we expect will happen? If farmers’ income is reduced by 60% in only 15 years, how many American farmers will still be in business?
Revelation 6:5-6 “When he opened the third seal, I heard the second living creature say, “Come!” And I looked, and behold, a black horse! And its rider had a pair of scales in his hand. And I heard what seemed to be a voice in the midst of the four living creatures, saying, “A quart of wheat for a day’s wage, and three quarts of barley for a day’s wage, and do not harm the oil and wine.”
June 13, 2009 at 7:11 pm
GIven that the federal Constitution is silent about climate change, the 10th A. automatically reserves government power to regulate and tax climate change issues to the states, not the Oval Office and Congress. In fact, Chief Justice Marshall had established the following case precedent, now wrongly ignored, which appropriately limits the power of the feds to lay taxes.
“Congress is not empowered to tax for those purposes which are within the exclusive province of the States.” –Chief Justice Marshall, GIBBONS V. OGDEN (1824) http://supreme.justia.com/us/22/1/case.html
So cap-and-trade is just another excuse by the corrupt, Democratic-controlled federal government to lay constitutionally unauthorized taxes on the people.
The bottom line is that the people need to wise up to the ongoing, illegal usurpation of state powers by the feds and do the following. The people need to elect pro-state power leaders to the state governments in 2010 who will do as follows. State lawmakers need to go “upstream” of Congress and repeal the ill-conceived 16th and 17th Amendments, the 16th A. making it too easy for the corrupt feds to lay constitutionally unauthorized taxes, in my opinion.
And once the 16th A. has been repealed and the federal income tax eliminated, the state governments can finance the feds with higher state taxes. The reason for this is as follows. The states can use their greater constitutional powers to serve the people to fight a downhill battle with the feds, eliminating constitutionally unauthorized federal taxes, keeping as many tax dollars in a given state as possible. (Did you hear that California?)
And when state government “leaders” show their voters that they are more interested in protecting the welfare of the federal government than that of their own state, then they can look for another job.
June 13, 2009 at 8:29 pm
You’re right in everything you say.
The only “fly in your ointment” is something you would probably agree with me to be the case: liberal-progressive-socialists don’t CARE about what the Constitution says, or about reason. The only calculus they care about is the mathematics of power. And they will demagogue their way to power, undermine their way to power, redefine their way to power, or use any other device that will get them dominion over the hearts and minds of the population.
They don’t care if the population is smaller (through abortion, euthanasia, and “medical rationing,”); and they don’t care if it is much poorer with a much lower standard of living than would have been the case had they relied upon capitalism rather than socialism. The point is and always has been control.
June 14, 2009 at 3:16 am
You’re right in everything you say.
The only “fly in your ointment” is something you would probably agree with me to be the case: liberal-progressive-socialists don’t CARE about what the Constitution says, or about reason. The only calculus they care about is the mathematics of power. And they will demagogue their way to power, undermine their way to power, redefine their way to power, or use any other device that will get them dominion over the hearts and minds of the population.
They don’t care if the population is smaller (through abortion, euthanasia, and “medical rationing,”); and they don’t care if it is much poorer with a much lower standard of living than would have been the case had they relied upon capitalism rather than socialism. The point is and always has been control.
Sorry… forgot to say great post – can’t wait to read your next one!
June 14, 2009 at 5:31 am
This is SO “Atlas Shrugs” it’s almost unbelievable.
June 14, 2009 at 3:35 pm
A population of healthy, informed, clear-thinking, and morally-upright people is impossible to bully around.
First one must destroy their virtue through various addictions and vices, like alcoholism and pornography, then re-educate their kids to believe that government is their only hope, then begin to scare the population into the arms of government programs of protection: economic, military, social, personal, and finally spiritual.
Don’t lose hope Hillary, Barack and Judge Ginsberg. We’re almost there!
June 14, 2009 at 5:07 pm
I came across (somewhere) a quote from someone who said, “Some mornings I wake up and think I’m in an Ayn Rand novel, and other mornings I wake up thinking I’m in the Apocalypse.”
This is simply bizarre – with most Americans going about their business as though everything is basically fine.
June 14, 2009 at 5:10 pm
John Adams
“We have no government armed with the power capable of contending with human passions, unbridled by morality and true religion. Our constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.”
Alexis de Tocqueville
“Above this race of men stands an immense and tutelary power, which takes upon itself alone to secure their gratifications and to watch over their fate. That power is absolute, minute, regular, provident, and mild. It would be like the authority of a parent if, like that authority, its object was to prepare men for manhood; but it seeks, on the contrary, to keep them in perpetual childhood; it is well content that the people should rejoice, provided they think of nothing but rejoicing. For their happiness such a government willingly labors, but it chooses to be the sole agent and the only arbiter of that happiness; it provides for their security, foresees and supplies their necessities, facilitates their pleasures, manages their principal concerns, directs their industry, regulates the descent of property, and subdivides their inheritances; what remains, but to spare them all the care of thinking and all the trouble of living?”
Give up what Adams said we needed to sustain a democracy, and we invariably get what de Tocqueville predicted as a result.
June 19, 2009 at 12:46 pm
This is Obama’s revenge on America for the humiliation he and his grandmorher suffered when he was growiong up. They were ridiculed for being of different races. Isn’t it amazing how everything has played into his hands and no one is doing anything about it, not even the republicans. He’s getting away with it. He’s going to make us wish we were never born. I say he should be inpeached because he is not upholding the constitution as he swore to do. Instead he has trampled all over it.
June 21, 2009 at 9:56 am
Obama grew up on his granparent’s largess in Hawaii while his elitist socialist mother experimented with Marxist anthropology. Obama’s father wanted nothing to do with him.
Personally, I doubt if Obama experienced a lot of racial bias growing up (in Hawaii, he’d actually be more likely to be persecuted for being WHITE than half black by the Hawaiians); his parents and their horrible worldview are what screwed him up. But “screwed up” he most certainly is.
Obama is the endgame of democracy gone bad. As Benjamin Franklin said, “When the people find they can vote themselves money, that will herald the end of the republic.” And the end is at hand.
Obama also underscores the ultimate lie of taking a foundational Constitution and pissing it away by calling it “a living breathing document subject to change.” It now means nothing more than what an Obama wants it to mean.
I saw what was going to happen to America under Obama with crystal clarity when the Jeremiah Wright sermons came out. I knew that he was a Marxist, and an evil man in staying in that hateful church for 23 years. The only thing that has surprised me is how fast Obama has poisoned the nation by poisoning our economy.
June 26, 2009 at 6:57 pm
Does Obama want to destroy the American economy? Cap and trade legislation will be great for job creation…..IN MEXICO.
June 27, 2009 at 8:45 pm
Steve,
What may be almost as bad as capping our energy/productivity while our competitors laugh at us is that there is a provision in the bill to ignite a Smoot-Hawley, part Deux trade war that will be a catalyst for the next Great Depression.
The bill seeks to force US companies from “offshoring,” and has a threshold to initiate tariffs to countries like China and Mexico. China and Mexico would respond, of course, and the trade war will be on – at a time when we can LEAST afford one.
August 16, 2011 at 6:19 pm
At least we are blessed to know that with GOD all things are possible!!! May God Bless and Protect The United States of America!!!
August 16, 2011 at 6:20 pm
Is there a way to share this article on my facebook wall?
August 16, 2011 at 9:29 pm
Dorothy,
God has a plan for our destiny, and GOD’S PLAN truly is moving full speed ahead.
I don’t mind being cross-posted. All I ask for is that my articles be sourced to me as author, and you are welcome to re-post. The only exception to that is when articles are used in a for-profit venue. So have at it.
Food prices are soaring, even as farmers are in the process of going broke.