Key Vote “No” S. 3036: the Lieberman-Warner “Climate Security Act”

On behalf of hundreds of thousands of FreedomWorks members nationwide, I urge you to vote “No” on S. 3036, the Lieberman-Warner “Climate Security Act.” The Act, which proposes to curb greenhouse gases, would significantly hamstring the economy of the United States by burdening taxpayers and risking thousands of jobs as our global competitiveness vanishes under a flood of regulations, taxes, and higher costs.

Already staggering energy costs would skyrocket under the plan. EPA estimates say that on top of the current high prices at the pump, Americans could see, at minimum, an additional $.53 a gallon tacked on to the price, not to mention the rising costs that would be applied to basic needs such as electricity and food. Recent analysis by the Heritage Foundation showed that at best, the bill would reduce the Earth’s future temperatures by one – or two-tenths of a degree Celsius, barely enough to measure or verify.

The costs, on the other hand are enormous. Heritage Foundation analyst David Kreutzer compared the economic damage of the Lieberman-Warner bill to be equal to that of 660 hurricanes, 35 per year, for two decades. A hurricane every week by 2030 – altogether 18 times the expected toll of natural hurricanes hitting the U.S. from 2012 to 2030.

Although Lieberman-Warner has been touted as the market-friendly solution to a nagging problem, this is hardly the case. Rather, it is a massive energy tax that constricts already scarce supplies due to past regulatory wrangling and boosts prices at every point in production. The Heritage Foundation estimates that gross domestic product losses could reach $4.8 trillion by 2030, with MIT, the EPA and other groups coming to similar conclusions. While it would be nice to imagine these costs fall only on large energy producers, the costs inevitably fall on consumers, falling most severely on the poor who spend a much larger proportion of their income on the essentials of life like heat, transportation, and food.

This bill, that creates a system that redistributes wealth to a small group of special interests at the cost of thousands of jobs and the financial security of millions of citizens, is far too much to pay for such paltry results.

We will count your vote on S. 3036 as a KEY VOTE when calculating the FreedomWorks Economic Scorecard for 2008. The FreedomWorks Economic Scorecard is used to determine eligibility for the Jefferson Award, which recognizes members of Congress with voting records that support economic freedom.

Sincerely,

Matt Kibbe
President and CEO
FreedomWorks.org