Another McCain Tax Increase – Energy

Republican presidential hopeful, Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., is accompanied by his wife Cindy as they greet supporters at a campaign rally at Michigan State University in East Lansing, Mich., Sunday, Jan. 13, 2008.

Wonder if the Michigan and South Carolina GOP voters know about this McCain secret: McCain favors a broad-based energy tax to fight what?

Global Warming?

The real surprise is that in a Republican primary in which Senator McCain’s anti-tax credentials are in question, none of his opponents have even mentioned his advocacy of this new broad-based energy tax. I will leave it to political pundits to speculate on the reasons why. But if it is thought that the climate change benefits will be worth these significant new costs on consumers and producers — think again. Over the next 100 years, the CO2 reductions from the tax will result in a temperature change that even its proponents concede, is so small as to be virtually undetectable by current technologies.

And, what would the tax increase entail?

• The EPA estimated that the tax will be about $.26 cents in current dollars per gallon of gasoline by 2030 and $.68 cents per gallon by 2050.

• For electricity, the EPA estimates that the McCain energy tax would increase individual’s electric bills by 22 percent in 2030 and 25 percent in 2050.

And what would these new taxes mean for the economy?

The present value of the cumulative reduction in real GDP for the 2012-2030 period ranges from $660 billion to $2.1 trillion…the cumulative reduction in the present value of real GDP for the 2012-2050 period ranges from about $1.6 trillion to $5.2 trillion.

Flap wonders if Michigan voters know that John McCain proposes even higher taxes for them? Taxes that do NOTHING.

I bet not.