Cost and consequences of Dem energy bill

David Hirsayni:

Facts. Costs. Consequences. Who cares?

We're in the middle of pretending to save the planet, baby.

If it's about helping the environment, suspend reason and salvation is yours. I'm sure you've also had a lot of smart and compassionate folks tell you lately: Doing something — anything! — is better than doing nothing.

So the House did something. It passed a "cap-and-trade" bill that would ration energy, destroy productive jobs, levy the largest tax increase in U.S. history and, for kicks, penalize foreign trade partners who failed to engage in comparable economic suicide.

Now, assuming there are no speed- reading clairvoyants in Congress, no one who voted for the 1,200-page bill — plus the 300-page amendment dropped the morning of the vote — could possibly have read it.

And any scum-sucking scoundrel who points out that "doing nothing" already includes spending billions on renewable energy and living under thousands of regulations is (as New York Times columnist Paul Krugman shrewdly noted) a traitor to humankind.

Speaking of doing nothing: Though it has the potential to stagnate the economy, the American Clean Energy and Security Act, according to the Environmental Protection Agency itself, will not create any reductions in emissions by 2020. The piddling impact of the bill is documented across the ideological spectrum.

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The House's cap-and-trade bill also means that any energy that does not rely on windmills or solar panels — so, nearly all energy — could become cheaper to import rather than refine here.

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When Nobel winners like Krugman spew insults rather than logic to support their point of view, it suggest there is a lack of logic to begin with. What this bill will do is destroy the economy and not produce any benefit. The costs are high and the consequences are bad.