Talk Radio News Service: News, Politics, Media

By Mariko Lamb, Talk Radio News Service

“Cap and Trade is a jobs killer,” Sen. John Barrasso (R-Wyo.) said in a bicameral Western Caucus hearing on the impact of Cap and Trade on jobs Thursday. He urged the Obama administration to “get their priorities straight,” and start creating jobs.

Bill Kovacs, Senior Vice President of the Environment, Technology, and Regulatory Division at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, said the Waxman-Markey bill will promote regulatory chaos, foster lawsuits, do great harm to the economy, and ultimately not reduce carbon emissions in the atmosphere.

President and CEO of the Black Chamber of Commerce, Harry Alford pointed to a recent study by Charles RIvers Associates which concluded the Waxman-Markey bill will lead to higher energy and transportation costs fir businesses and consumers, a fall in household disposable income and consumption, decline in purchasing power, a fall in wages and returns on investments, net job loss and a decrease in the U.S.’ ability to compete internationally.

"There are two jobs destroyed for every green job created,” Former GOP Rep. Dick Armey (R-TX) argued. “Global warming might be, in fact, one of the most hyped fictions in America today.”

Armey added that the “most treasured umbrella objective in public policy” right now is to “create the illusion of a crisis and then... demonstrate the need for their policies of government growth and income redistribution as a resolution of the crisis." Armey went on to describe global warming as a “high-profile [fiction] designed to serve the political purposes of the majority party.”