RUSH: Almost a thousand pages here. John Kerry (the haughty John Kerry, once served in Vietnam) and Joe Lieberman have announced their big bill, and a number of sources cover it. Investor’s Business Daily nails it in an editorial. ‘The bill introduced Wednesday and sponsored by the two senators is called the American Power Act, an Orwellian phrase if ever there was one. Like President Obama’s offshore drilling program, for every ‘incentive’ there is a restriction. It’s as if Hamlet were to be appointed Secretary of Energy.’ For those of you in Rio Linda, I don’t have time to explain that analogy. ‘To that end, the bill creates some 60 new agencies and projects to eat up our tax dollars and buy support,’ and the bureaucracy that is created is in a little chart or a box here in their story.
‘According to a leaked draft summary, there is ‘$7 billion annually to improve our transportation infrastructure and efficiency’ to be paid for by a gas tax that is not called a tax but a ‘linked fee,’ which is a new phrase: a linked fee. ‘There is ‘$2 billion per year for researching and developing effective carbon capture and sequestration methods and devices.’ There is even ‘a new multibillion-dollar revenue stream for agriculture through a domestic offset program.’ … Ironically, the draft summary acknowledges the bill will cause energy prices to necessarily skyrocket…’ The authors of ‘[T]he bill will cause energy prices to necessarily skyrocket…’ by promising to ‘provide assistance to those Americans who may be disproportionately affected by potential increases in energy prices.” So you and I are gonna subsidize the despised and disadvantaged, when it is very simple: ‘How about lowering prices and creating jobs by increasing domestic supply?’
It’s not about energy. It’s not about ‘green’ this and that. It’s the same thing as health care: It’s not about health care; it’s about expanding government. It’s about raising taxes. And it is about controlling freedom and people and limiting it. Here. This from page 600 of the energy tax bill: ‘Second phase, international assistance. Not later than November 2011 or the date that is one year after the date of enactment of this act, whichever is later, the administrator shall complete a report that identifies opportunities including action under existing authority to achieve significant reductions in emissions of black carbon and other light-absorbing aerosols in foreign countries through the provision of technical and other assistance, including identifying countries and regions that may be able to implement or expand programs for deploying cleaner and more efficient cook stoves and cook stove fuels, particularly in Africa and the developing regions of Asia.
With this legislation, we are going to replace the cooking stoves around the world, particularly in Africa. The word ‘international’ in the Kerry bill appears 213 times, in a 987-page bill. ‘United Nations’ appears 17 times. The word ‘secretary,’ meaning the US Secretary of Energy, appears 488 times. Usually the context is, ‘The secretary shall decide’ or ‘The secretary shall require.’ Now, here is the provision, it’s on page 775 and 776. ‘The provisions for low-income families: In the case of an eligible taxpayer who is entitled to receive monthly cash payments under Section 2201 of the Social Security Act for months during the taxable year the secretary shall prescribe rules by which the credit allowed by subsection A with respect to such taxpayer may be distributed through the same mechanism as the monthly cash payments under the energy refund program under Section 2201 in lieu of such credit being allowed on the return of tax for the taxable year.’
So it defines who the ‘underprivileged’ are and how many times they are going to be subsidized or provided for by other taxpayers because of the skyrocketing prices that the authors of the bill admit will happen. Now, remember, folks, all of this is based — theoretically now. The way they’ve sold this from Obama to Kerry — I’m sad to say even Senator Lieberman. But it’s like I’ve told you: ‘At the end of the day he’s a liberal, and liberals are liberals.’ It’s all been about ‘green energy,’ wind and solar, getting rid of the filth that is oil! Getting rid of the filth that is coal! We’re going to have this clean energy. Just like Spain! Obama has even cited Spain as our model. So yesterday, Obama calls the leader of Spain to lecture him on how to lower his debt to cut spending to avoid becoming like Greece. But do you remember Obama while running for president talking many, many times about how the US should be like Spain in that they had created this Eden of green economy?
He promised us those same idyllic jobs. Well, Spain’s unemployment rate is approaching 20%. Spain is failing, and the statists in Spain have admitted that in no small part the reason is they got suckered into creating a ‘green economy.’ Like Greece being told out to cut out the government and health care, Spain is saying they have to cut out the green crap to keep from being Greece! We’re headed right down the same path that Greece has taken, and now we’re going to go down the same path this Spain took and we’re going to lose jobs, we’re going to raise the price of energy, we’re not going to expand any of our supply. We are just going to destroy! This administration, this regime and all its members are just creating a path of destruction wherever they go. I gotta take a time-out hire, folks. Oh, before I do, two sound bites. Two sound bites. We want to go back in time, because I’ve always said: If you listen to the liberals, they will tell us, sometimes straight up, what we’re going to do. Sound bite number three, January 2008 at an editorial board meeting, San Francisco Chronicle. Obama said…
OBAMA: When I was asked earlier about, uh, the issue of coal. Uhhh, y’know, under my plan of a cap-and-trade system, electricity rates would necessarily skyrocket.
RUSH: ‘Under my plan…rates would necessarily skyrocket.’ That’s it. They want five to seven-dollar-a-gallon gasoline. They want utility bills so high that you don’t use your utilities, because they want to ‘conserve,’ ostensibly. No, no, no! They want to control, and they premise all this on the fact that we Americans are destroying the planet. Same meeting, editorial board, San Francisco Chronicle, Obama.
OBAMA: We would put a cap-and-trade system in place, eh, that is as aggressive, if not more aggressive, than anybody else’s out there. So if somebody wants to build a coal-powered plant, they can. It’s just that it will bankrupt them because they’re gonna be charged a huge sum for all that, uh, greenhouse gas that’s being emitted.
RUSH: Their carbon footprint. So they’ve told us. This is 2008. This is during the campaign. And now they’re putting it in motion, 987 pages of it. The regime presents the bill as authored by the haughty John Kerry and Joe Lieberman.