I'm Pete du Pont with the National Center for Policy Analysis. Senate switcher Jim Jeffords is at it again, showing that Independents can come up with terrible ideas too.
Jeffords is pushing a bill in the senate to force cuts in nitrogen oxides, sulfur dioxide, mercury and carbon dioxide emissions from power plants.
His scheme would cut gross domestic product by about .8 percent – about $100 billion — and cost a million jobs. It would reduce coal-fired electricity generation by up to a quarter. Even the Environmental Protection Agency, says the bill would raise electricity prices up to 50 percent by 2015, and the agency's acting director testified natural gas prices would increase 20 percent by 2020.
And the benefit? The Cato Institute used the United Nations computer model to assess the Jeffords bill, and found it would prevent .04 degrees fahrenheit of global warming over the next 50 years.
President Bush isn't too busy fighting terrorists to warn he'll veto this mess if it ever hits his desk.
Those are my ideas, and at the N-C-P-A we know ideas can change the world. Visit the ncpa website at http://www.ncpathinktank.org/. I'm Pete du Pont. Next time, giving thanks.