5/19/2009 1:05 PM ET
(RTTNews) -
Senator Jim Inhofe (R-OK) spoke out against cap-and-trade as a policy to establish new green jobs during the Senate Environment and Public Works Full Committee hearing on Business Opportunities and Climate Policy Tuesday.
Cap-and-trade spending is a policy of controlling pollution by providing economic incentives for achieving reductions in the emissions of pollutants, and is strongly supported by the Obama administration.
"I am opposed to increasing taxes," Inhofe said. "And cap-and-trade is, plain and simple, a tax. It's an indirect, hidden, sneaky tax, but it's a tax."
He said it's a tax that will "fall more heavily on poorer people because poorer people spend a higher percentage of their incomes on energy than do wealthier people."
It's also a tax, Inhofe added, that "for every business opportunity it will create, it will destroy others, especially in energy-intensive industries, which are concentrated in the states that use coal for electricity."
Inhofe further cited a study on Spain as an evidence of how using cap-and-trade to establish green jobs can backfire, stating, "Spain has real world examples over the past decade of implementing these types of policies. It found that for every 4 green jobs created, 9 other jobs were lost."
"Other findings from this study," Inhofe continued, "show that Spain spent 571,138 Euros on average to create each green job. Spanish energy regulators estimate that the rate paid by end consumers for electricity must be raised by 31% to repay this debt."
He argued that while House Democratic leaders are "attempting to mark up their bill this week, they are picking winners and losers by distributing billions of dollars in pollution 'allowances' to favored industries."
"True innovation, job growth, and business opportunities should stem from the open and free market and not from creation of more taxes and government spending," Inhofe added.
"Yet that is exactly the direction we will go if we pass cap-and-trade and establish a new, government-created market based on carbon, all at the taxpayers' expense."
Inhofe's statement came as President Barack Obama announced new federal fuel standards that will require passenger cars and light trucks to get an overall average of 35.5 miles per gallon by 2016.
Under Obama's plan, by 2016, cars will be expected to average about 39 mpg and trucks will be expected to average about 30 mpg.
Obama did acknowledge that the plan will raise the cost of producing vehicles - by about $1,300 per vehicle - but said that cost would be offset by the amount of money consumers would save by driving fuel-efficient cars.
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