We Need a Mexican Standoff on Cap and Trade

We Need a Mexican Standoff on Cap and Trade This is an article in The American Spectator by my husband and Roger Abbott.

One of the points he makes is that

The Democrats hope that retiring Republican Senators George Voinovich (OH), George LeMieux (FL), and Judd Gregg (NH), who have voiced support for climate legislation in the past and will no longer need to worry about responding to their constituents, will buck the party line in order to cement their respective "legacies" in the eyes of the media and liberal historians.

This to me is as upsetting as the actual legislation itself.

The United States of America is a representational government. Our Founding Fathers did NOT want party politics. There is no mention of political parties in our foundation documents whatsoever. But now, party politics are trumping the duty ever government official must owe the American people - to work solely on our behalf. Not for themselves, not for their political party, but for the American people they were hired to represent.

It is the SHAME of Congress that its members have put party politics above representing the people. This tendency is the root cause of the rise of the TEA Party. Decent, hard-working Americans are disgusted by so many things from fiscal irresponsibility to special-interest domination, that the TEA Party movement has coalesced.

Will it form a third party? I hope not. I hope it will cause a revolution in American politics, a revolution back to our roots where our representatives understand that they must REPRESENT their constituents and NOT their political party. I firmly support the TEA Party missions insofar as it leads to this result.

As for this nasty bit of legislation - Cap and Trade - I think my husband sums it up best in his article, a sample of which is below:

Most Americans understand that cap and trade would mean skyrocketing energy costs -- as the President himself admitted during his election campaign -- but that's not all. Cap and trade would carry serious geopolitical ramifications for the United States.

During the lame duck session, President Obama will likely travel to Cancun, not on vacation, but to attend a global climate summit. At this follow-up to the failed Copenhagen summit, the international environmental establishment will hope to revive negotiations for a successor to the Kyoto Protocol. The U.S. will face pressure not only to cap its own emissions, but to provide aid to developing countries like Mexico to help them develop their own "green" energy industries and build new, "clean" industrial capacity -- the better to out-compete America's newly energy-taxed industries. The EU has already pledged €7.3 billion ($9.92 billion) in "climate aid" to poor countries over the next three years (although much of this is repurposed general aid).

Where would America find the money to send this aid abroad? Much of the money would likely come from the sale of carbon permits to American businesses, the cost of which will mostly be passed on to consumers. Developing countries are demanding this as part of any successor to Kyoto, which expires in 2012. However, they are also demanding that developing countries -- including major emerging economies like Mexico, Brazil, and China -- be exempted from having to reduce their own emissions, at least in the short term.