Washington Style Climate Control

Here is a little story that I think reveals a great deal about inside-the-beltway thinking and the recent Climate Control bill passed by Speaker Pelosi.

As the election season was heating up over the last couple of years, so too was the common wisdom on Global Warming and the legislation that would be necessary to fix it. The Left-Right split on the issue was stark: dire apocalyptic gloom on the Left, skeptical deniers on the Right. But that was only how Washington spoke in public. In the councils of our government the elite always talked of other things.

Elizabeth Dole, retired by voters in 2008, was a Senator from North Carolina, occupying the seat held by Jesse Helms for more than 30 years. She was not as conservative as Helms (who was?), but throughout her long career in government service she had established a nice book of conservative credentials.

Even so, Liddy Dole was a quintessential Washington insider. Wife of Bob Dole, head of the Red Cross, Senator from North Carolina, Liddy Dole swam and thrived in the waters of Washington opinion all her adult life. And on Climate Control her staff let slip once the Secret Wisdom of the Washington elite. This was last year, about springtime, when an obscure radio talk show reported that Liddy Dole’s office expressed the following reason for imposing a Cap and Trade system on the American economy (I paraphrase here from memory): “We need the money to invest in upgrading America's energy infrastructure.”

That's "we" as in Washington. That's "money" as in Cap and Trade revenue streams. That's "invest" as in spend. That's "energy infrastructure" as in huge government boondoggles incorporating the latest trendy Washington cocktail party opinion on where trillions of dollars need to be spent. And that's "Washington cocktail party opinion" as in a group of people who have never, ever invested their own money in energy infrastructure, much less run an actual energy company that produces real infrastructure through risk, innovation, exploration, production or distribution. And additionally, have far more on their minds than energy anyway.

In sum, the legislation is simply a trillion dollar tax on the American people so Washington will have the money to do what Washington deems important. What's important depends on the politician, but Climate Control is at best peripheral to Washington’s concerns, and at worst irrelevant, which is why Greenpeace withdrew its support at the last minute.

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For the Left, apparently the money is needed to fund the huge costs of Universal Health Care. For the Right, well, the Right is in obvious disarray these days, so it is not quite clear what the Liddy Doles would do with all those new trillions in the Federal coffers. Probably a bunch of wonkish stuff like Boone Pickens' subsidized wind farms slashing across the heartland of America and/or hydrogen/electrical/nitrogen/gluten/Red Dye No. 8 powered cars of the future.

But, Left or Right, it makes no difference. Climate Control legislation is most definitely not about climate control. It is about huge new sources of money so Washington can do the myriad things Washington wants to do, which largely revolves around paying off large voting blocks of those enamored with Washington’s largesse.

The irony is that in order to get the bare minimum votes Speaker Pelosi needed to pass the legislation, the Democrats had to horse-trade away about all of the new tax money. That’s right, let me repeat. Washington has already spent the Cap and Trade tax revenues to buy the votes it needed to pass the Cap and Trade tax legislation ("Under Waxman Markey, eighty five percent of initial carbon allowances would be simply given away. Estimates are that those initial allowances could be worth hundreds of billions of dollars annually."). Those nice new revenues are now promised to the GE’s of the world, the power companies, the lobbyists for power companies, and to the various politicians from coal-producing states to relieve their constituents pain as the Doctors of Washington slowly bleed the life out of their economy.

But don’t worry. A crestfallen Washington will soon revive itself over cocktails and power lunches and bold plans will be made for as yet unidentified new tax revenues.

But ssshhhh. Don’t tell anyone.