Cap and Trade Is a Tax

WSJ reported "The Obama budget did more to help us consolidate and coalesce the business community than anything we could have done. It's opened eyes to the fact that this is about a social welfare transfer system, not about climate."

Precisely. It is about wealth transfer, and making everyone dependant on Big Government.

Truth is, any cap-and-trade system is a tax, even if Mr. Obama's plan has only started to force business proponents to admit it. The government sets a cap on how much greenhouse gas can be emitted annually. Companies buy and sell permits that allow them to emit. Customers bear the price of those permits.

But the political question was always how that first batch of permits would end up with companies. Corporate support rested on the belief they'd be "allocated," for free.

Nothing is free.

This would allow them to delay the day when they'd have to pass costs on to consumers, and ignore, for now, the "tax" question. It didn't take long for the pols to figure out they could auction off permits and spend the loot.

Tax and Spend.

President Obama's auction bonanza would earn the feds $650 billion in 10 years, according to the administration's budget estimate -- and that's a low, low, low estimate.