WASHINGTON — President Obama was skewered from the right yesterday for using the Gulf oil spill to advance his climate-change agenda, and at the same time lambasted from the left for not giving concrete guidance to get that legislation approved.
Democrats are pushing a highly controversial “cap and trade” plan that would penalize companies for producing carbon dioxide, but the bill has been stalled in the Senate.
Republicans charge the measure amounts to a massive tax hike on productive companies and would kill jobs. Democrats say it is the only way to save the planet from so-called greenhouse gases that they say are responsible for climate change.
Obama is “holding the Gulf hostage to a national energy tax, which the president has been trying to pass for a year and a half,” Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell told Fox News yesterday.
While the bill contains no direct tax increase on gasoline or energy use, it is widely agreed that corporations and especially energy companies will pass their increased costs on to consumers.
Even Sen. Lindsay Graham (R-SC), who helped draft the energy legislation, has said as much. He withdrew his support for the bill last month, saying it is too difficult to pass in the current political climate.
McConnell calls the bill a “light-switch tax,” arguing that consumers will get nicked every time they use virtually any form of existing energy.
“They call it a climate bill. What it is is a national energy tax,” McConnell said.
From the left, Obama was blasted for not providing Democrats in Congress more specific guidance on how to advance the legislation.
Liberal blogger Josh Green accused Obama of “going small” in his address by neglecting to argue more specifically for carbon caps.
And the liberal Mother Jones magazine warned that Democrats will remain adrift on climate legislation without forceful guidance from Obama.
Under the most-widely discussed cap-and-trade scheme, caps would be set on the carbon that companies such as energy plants could emit.
But a market would be set up allowing companies to buy and sell credits allowing them to go over the emission limits.
While the House passed an climate-change bill last year, the Senate version remains stalled.
Some Democratic members are concerned about the murky science behind global warming, and worry about raising costs for voters or doing anything that will result in lost jobs.
According to the Congressional Budget Office, curbing emissions by 15 percent would amount to a 3.3 percent loss in after-tax income for poorest households in America.
Middle-income households would see their post-tax paychecks eroded by anywhere from $800 to $1,500 and the rich would see their incomes decline by about 1.7 percent, according to the congressional auditors.
Obama’s Environmental Protection Agency this week released an analysis showing lower costs — around $79 to $146 per household annually.
Sen. Joe Lieberman (D-Conn.), one of the authors of the bill, spun those numbers as costing a household less than $1 per day.