Topic: Newsmax
A Sept. 17 Newsmax article by Dan Weil claims that a "previously unreleased Treasury Department analysis" concludes that "a cap-and-trade law would cost every American household $1,761 a year — or a national total of nearly $200 billion a year, the equivalent of hiking personal income taxes by about 15 percent."
But the analysis Weil is writing about isn't applicable to the cap-and-trade law currently before Congress.
As Media Matters details, the Treasury memo discusses a proposal that would auction 100 percent of the emissions allowances, which would have generated the "nearly $200 billion a year" Neil references. But the cap-and-trade law currently before Congress provides for giving away 80 percent of those emissions allowances.
Further, both the current legislation proposes, and Obama himself has proposed, methods to reduce the impact of cap-and-trade on consumers -- which is not accounted for in the memo Weil cites. A Congressional Budget Office analysis of the current legislation found that that average cost to households in 2020 is $175 per year when various methods of impact mitigation methods are included.
Weil mentions none of this.
Similarly, a Sept. 17 interview by WorldNetDaily/Radio America's Greg Corombos of Peter Sepp of the National Taxpayers Union touted the memo while failing that it doesn't analyze the bill actually before Congress. Indeed, Sepp distorts things further, claiming that "this should be viewed as the floor of what additional monies taxpayers would have to fork over rather than the ceiling."
