The non-partisan Congressional Budget Office (CBO), which conducts budgetary and economic analyses for the United States Congress, estimates that the cost of the American Clean Energy and Security Act (the House-passed bill) will be $8 billion over a ten year period for the increased growth in government required by the bill.However, CBO also estimates that the House bill will ultimately shrink the federal deficit over the same ten year period. One reason for the shrink in the deficit is that the legislation raises revenue by charging business to for the purchase of “pollution permits,” or the right to emit greenhouse gases into the environment. While the bill was passed in the House of Representatives this summer, the Senate will not take up the legislation until the fall.
The House bill is certainly not without its critics, perhaps most notably is Senator James Inhofe (OK) who is the top ranking Republican on the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee. Inhofe is quoted in an article on the CBO report that is published on the USA Today website stating, “the bill ‘is full of regulations, mandates, bureaucracy and big government programs[.]’”
However, as Traci Watson reports for USA Today, Representative Edward Markey’s (one of the authors of the House legislation) spokesperson Daniel Reilly contends the bill’s goals outweigh the concerns some lawmakers may have. Reilly states in the article, ‘"The bill is deficit-neutral and will create millions of new clean-energy jobs, curb our dangerous dependence on foreign oil and reduce global warming[.]’”
The House bill is over 1400 pages long. The legislation creates new tasks for 21 federal agencies, and it creates new programs to combat international deforestation. As the CBO states in its report, this is a significant increase in the workloads of the affected agencies.
To read the USA Today article click here.
Posted: 08/11/09
