It's an Energy Tax

Speaking to reporters, the President called on members of Congress to support the bill, calling it "balanced and sensible" and "a jobs bill." The President added that the cost of the bill would amount to only the price of one postage stamp a day for each American houshold.

API's careful examination of the Waxman-Markey bill has reached markedly different conclusions. Here are the facts as we see them:

• The CBO's analyses of the bill greatly underestimate the potential cost. When the flaws in the analyses are corrected, the studies indicate the cost could be more than $278 a month per average American household.
• A recent study by CRA International for the National Black Chamber of Commerce estimates the bill could cause a net loss of more than two million jobs a year.
• The bill is not "balanced." Waxman-Markey provides only two percent of free emission allowances to most refiners, but holds them responsible for 44 percent of all carbon emissions. This inequitable system of allocations will have a disproportionately adverse impact on consumers as well as producers of gasoline, diesel fuel, jet fuel, crude oil and natural gas.

Warren Buffett, one of the most successful and respected voices on the economy today, calls the bill a tax. In a CNBC interview yesterday, Buffett said:

"...it's a huge tax and there's no sense calling it anything else. I mean, it is a tax. And it's a fairly regressive tax. If we buy permits, essentially, at our utilities, that goes right into the bills of the utility customers and an awful lot of people in Iowa, in Oregon, and Utah, and places where we are, very poor people are going to pay a lot more money for electricity. So I think that can be improved."

API believes the Waxman-Markey bill is too flawed to be improved, and should be replaced with legislation that actually helps the environment without further damaging the economy.