What's Next - Taxing Your Breath?

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What's Next - Taxing Your Breath?

It may seem like an outlandish claim, but it could be closer to reality than you think.

Buried underneath the mountain of new debt created by the President's $3.6 trillion budget proposal - which by the way spends too much, borrows too much and taxes too much - is a program called "cap and trade." If you haven't heard about it yet, you soon will. It is a scheme devised by radical environmentalists and liberal politicians in Washington to get their big government hands in your wallet.

It is being sold as a way to save the planet by taxing "emitters", but it will kill the economy and decimate your family's budget.

It will add to the cost of everything produced with energy, which is literally everything. The people at greatest risk are low- and middle-income families, blue collar workers, the elderly, and those whose jobs will be destroyed if we adopt a cap-and-tax policy.

So how can this be? Well, the President's budget plan would place a mandatory cap on the level of allowable emissions of carbon dioxide (yes, the same stuff we exhale every few seconds), and then tax businesses by requiring them to buy allowances from the government.

You can bet your devalued dollar that these new costs will be passed along to you. In fact, this new tax on our economy will not only translate into higher prices on everything made and sold within the U.S., it will also cost Americans jobs by sending many industries overseas due to higher production costs.

And believe it or not, ranchers could also be forced to sell their herds because the methane released by livestock may also be regulated by the government. That's right - some liberals want to slap a tax on the gas passed by cattle.

On top of the massive job loss caused by closed factories, shut down mines, barren ranches and power plants rendered uncompetitive under the Democrat cap-and-trade scheme - electricity and fuel would be so expensive, every product so pricey that we will literally be forced to change the American way of life.

The predictions of how it will affect the U.S. economy and your bottom line are staggering:

• Job Losses: 1.8 to 7 million
• Family Tax Increase: $739 to $6,752
• Electricity Cost Increases: 44% to 129%
• Gasoline Price Increases: $.61 to $2.53 per gallon
• Natural Gas Increases: 108% to 146%

Most of these numbers came from the National Association of Manufacturers and while the exact cost increases may be debatable, experts - including those working at the White House - agree that prices will go up.

The small business community, which provides more than 70 percent of Texas jobs, will bear the brunt of this scheme.

Bill Hammond represents more than 140,000 small businesses as the head of the Texas Association of Business. He recently said:

"If Obama's proposals were to become law, Texas would shoulder an extraordinarily onerous burden. Our state is the energy capital of America and home to tens of thousands of small business owners. This federal legislation would shrink our state's ability to promote economic development, drive some of our best employers overseas and leave Texas consumers to pay even higher costs. Bankrolling Obama's liberal agenda on the back of our state's economic future is simply too high of a cost for Texas to bear."

But just how high will that cost really be? Let's look at the FACTS.

The President's plan is to reduce U.S. greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions by 80 percent from 1990 levels by the year 2050. To put this in perspective, that would be a level of emissions that the U.S. last experienced around 1910, when our population was about 92 million people. But experts predict that our population in 2050 will be about 420 million people, which means to comply with the President's plan our per capita GHG emissions will have to be around 2.5 metric tons per year, a level last seen in the U.S. around 1875.

All those numbers may be a little confusing, but they add up to one undisputable fact - achieving this target essentially requires replacing virtually the entire existing energy infrastructure of the United States.

Just imagine how this would ravage our economy. There would likely be blackouts, rampant job loss and empty cupboards.

It is a bleak picture, but it does not have to become reality. Republicans will continue to fight for reasonable solutions that protect the economy and the environment.

You can join the fight by making your voice heard. Tell President Obama, Speaker Nancy Pelosi, and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid you won't stomach any new tax on our economy, or surrender your freedoms to big spending bureaucrats.

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