How New Taxes Will Be Hidden

Let examine the promise that taxes won't be raised on anyone making less than $250,000 a year. A new report by the respected Tax Foundation found that the plan called cap and trade would reduce household earnings by $38 billion a year, and reduce U.S. employment by a million jobs. Furthermore, cap and trade would be a regressive tax. The burden would disproportionately be borne by low-income households, especially the bottom 20% of income earners.

So, what's behind these anti-middle-class plans? The announced purpose is that the use of carbon-based fuels (oil, gas and coal) is increasing CO2, which is trapping heat in the atmosphere and causing the earth's temperature to rise to catastrophic levels. A cap-and-trade system to curb carbon emissions is supposed to be more politically attractive than a direct carbon tax. But it's not any cheaper. It's just a different way of levying the tax.

The Obama administration hopes that increased energy costs will force us to shift away from fossil fuels and instead use various alternatives. But what are the alternatives? Nuclear plants? The left won't tolerate that. Windmills and solar panels to capture wind and sun? They now provide less than 1 percent of our energy, so the gain can't be enough to matter. "Clean coal technology"? More likely, cap and trade would just kill the coal industry.

Listen to my entire commentary on this topic.