What They Are Saying About Lieberman-Warner Climate Bill

Climate Bill Meets Resistance from Unexpected Sources

WASHINGTON, DC - Sen. James Inhofe (R-Okla.), ranking member of the Environment and Public Works Committee, said today that the wide ranging reactions to the Lieberman-Warner global warming cap-and-trade bill underscores the need for a thorough, full, open, and honest debate on the bill.  

Yesterday, the EPW subcommittee on Private Sector and Consumer Solutions to Global Warming and Wildlife Protection passed the bill by a vote of 4-3. The bill now goes to the EPW full committee for consideration. Senator Barbara Boxer has said she intends to hold a vote on the bill at full Committee in the next couple of weeks.

"American families deserve to know the tremendous economic burden that will be imposed on them if the Lieberman-Warner bill becomes law," Senator Inhofe said. "This bill, if enacted into law, would impose the equivalent of the largest tax increase in America history - larger than the Clinton-Gore 1993 tax increase. Unfortunately, it appears that the chair of the committee is committed to rushing this bill through the committee in just two weeks. As the ranking member of the committee, I am committed to working to ensure a thorough review of this bill takes place and Committee members have all the facts before they vote on this devastating legislation."

"To have a major Democratic Presidential candidate oppose Lieberman-Warner this strongly reveals the bill's serious economic flaws. Senator Lieberman's candid admission this week that the bill would cost ‘hundreds of billions of dollars' was yet another wake up call about the costs that will be imposed on American families."

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"Worst of all, [Lieberman-Warner] gives away pollution permits to industry for free - a massive corporate windfall - instead of doing what is right and selling them so that we can use these resources to invest in clean energy research and help regular families go green," Edwards said on November 1.  

Senator Joseph Lieberman (I-CT), the co-author of Lieberman-Warner:

"It's hard to imagine that [Lieberman-Warner] will not cost - over time -- these two sectors (electric power and industrial), hundreds of billions of dollars to comply with the demands of this bill," Senator Lieberman said November 1 during the EPW subcommittee on Private Sector and Consumer Solutions to Global Warming and Wildlife Protection mark up.

Former Federal Reserve chairman Alan Greenspan on the concept of cap-and-trade:

"Cap-and-trade systems or carbon taxes are likely to be popular only until real people lose real jobs as their consequence," Greenspan said.  

"There is no effective way to meaningfully reduce emissions without negatively impacting a large part of an economy." "Jobs will be lost and real incomes of workers constrained," Greenspan wrote in his new book, The Age of Turbulence.

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce: Lieberman-Warner "fatally flawed."

The Lieberman-Warner bill "does not adequately preserve American jobs and the domestic economy," wrote Chamber Executive vice president for government affairs R. Bruce Josten in an October 31, 2007 letter to Senators Lieberman and Warner.

"The bill requires American companies to undertake dramatic emissions reductions-15 percent below 2005 levels in 2020, and 70 percent by 2050-regardless of whether its economic competitors do the same, at least prior to the year 2019. By then much of the United States' energy-intensive industry could be gone, having either shut down or moved overseas," the Chamber letter stated.

The National Petrochemical & Refiners Association:  

"China has outpaced the U.S. as the world's largest emitter of CO2 and India is not far behind. Without meaningful international participation, the U.S. will face a regulatory regime costing potentially billions of dollars that would do little to address climate change," read a November 1 letter from NPRA's executive vice president Charles T. Drevna.