It's Not Easy Being Green

Tony Perkins, Washington Update: When Congress adjourned for Memorial Day recess, marriage was in disarray, gas prices were soaring, circuit courts sat empty, and our troops were still waiting for funding to replenish supplies. Now, fresh off a holiday weekend in which most families paid $4 a gallon to drive to neighborhood barbecues, American patience has worn thin. Imagine the frustration this week, as Congress returned to work--not on judges, marriage, or the war supplemental bill--but on changing the weather. By a 74-14 vote, the Senate agreed to devote days to the Lieberman-Warner legislation on global warming. Desperate to prove their environmental mettle, liberals are fighting for a policy that would bankrupt the economy and burden American taxpayers. The leadership says its goal is to slash CO2 emissions by almost 20 percent in 12 years, but conservatives argue the cost to American businesses and taxpayers far outweighs the negligible climate benefit. The bill's 500 pages are a complicated mess of distorted science, pork projects, and a tax-and-trade solution that will send U.S. jobs overseas and result in the most massive expansion of the federal government since the New Deal. In just 10 years, the tax burden to American families would skyrocket by $1 trillion. The average American would face higher heating and cooling bills, more pain at the pump, and expensive consumer products. From the less fortunate, the bill saps even more. As Senator Jim Inhofe (R-Okla.) points out in the Wall Street Journal, the poorest Americans already spend almost a fifth of their monthly budget on energy. By 2030, gas prices could climb anywhere from 45 cents to $1, and the U.S. economy would be on the hook for an extra $4.8 trillion. And for what? Even environmental advocates admit that in the end these concessions may do nothing to affect the earth's climate. After 40 years of Lieberman-Warner, the most that the Environmental Protection Agency is willing to promise is a one percent reduction in CO2 emissions. To hardworking Americans who are struggling to provide for their children, this entire debate is baffling. Sen. Inhofe, who has fought this global warming hysteria since 2003, challenged his colleagues to get back to business. "Will you dare stand on the Senate floor in these uncertain economic times and vote in favor of significantly increasing the price of gas at the pump, losing millions of American jobs, creating a huge new bureaucracy and raising taxes by record amounts?" Perhaps the most infuriating aspect of this bill is that the evidence is still very inconclusive about the climate threat. If anything is heating up, it's marriage. This Congress is becoming increasingly irrelevant to the real crises facing this nation as they refuse to intervene. Read More: Regulatory Inefficiency: Chart showing the regulatory structure of the Boxer/Lieberman/Warner Climate Change Bill

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