Cap-and-trade to fund Obama’s tax cuts
This seems to be a plan to make the workers pay for the proposed tax cuts for the middle-class.
"The White House planned to finance the tax cuts with revenues from its proposed cap-and-trade scheme to regulate carbon dioxide emissions, but neither the House nor Senate budget committees are planning to include those measures in their legislation.
In his press conference on Tuesday evening, Mr Obama said he remained committed to tackling climate change through cap-and-trade, despite concern in Congress that limits on CO2 emissions could undermine economic recovery by increasing energy costs.
The president said he was prepared to ‘listen’ if Congress had alternative ideas for funding tax cuts." Extract from Financial Times
I don't understand how this plan fits with Obama's promises to 'working families'. The premiss seems to be that 'cap-and-trade' controls will be a windfall that can be applied to middle-class tax rebates.
But cap-and-trade is just a clumsy tax. As Warren Buffet says, it's a regressive tax, too. It hits the poor even more than it hits the rich because the higher price of energy cascades through national production, raising the prices of goods (food, transport, clothing, heating, rent) that absorb the wages of low-paid workers and the incomes of pensioners.
Posted on 03/26 at 11:27 AM.
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