Senator warns 'green' plan would include biggest tax hike ever

Oklahoma's Inhofe says carbon tax would cost $1 trillion-plus. This is scary.

Sen. James Inhofe, R-Okla., is warning Americans that if “green” agenda campaigners get their way, the biggest tax increase ever could soon be coming out of Washington.
Bigger even than the hundreds of billions of dollars Obamacare will collect. In fact, in the range of $1.2 trillion to $1.6 trillion. A year.


It was during an interview with blogger Anthony Watts of Internet channel WUWT-TV that he expressed his concern about cap-and-trade and carbon taxes.



Inhofe has spent years in the U.S. Senate fighting cap-and-trade proposals and carbon taxes, which advocates tout as an answer to their claim that man-made emissions are causing the earth to warm.
The campaigns continue, led by such personalities as Al Gore, who has invested in the industry, even though the science supporting the claim largely has been discredited. In the Climategate scandal, for example, emails were uncovered among scientists strategizing how to “hide the decline” in the earth’s average temperature.
Inhofe takes on the issue in his book “The Greatest Hoax: How The Global Warming Conspiracy Threatens Your Future.”

In the WUWT-TV interview, Inhofe recalled working 12 or 13 years ago to investigate the claims of global warming, when early proposals for a cap-and-trade tax were made. Under such a program, emissions would be capped by law, and anyone wishing to release more than allowed would have to “trade” or buy the “credits.”

Shortly after that, Gore got into the business of promoting the credits, Inhofe noted.
Later came the proposal of taxing carbon emissions, he noted.

Early in the process, he said, the cost to taxpayers of a cap-and-trade program was estimated to have been in the range of $300 billion to $400 billion a year.

It was at that point that Inhofe looked into the science and found it lacking.

He noted that even though Congress has refused to adopt any such program, Barack Obama during his first term spent $68.4 billion on the global warming agenda simply by executive order.

“If we were to do this now through regulation, the cost would be far greater than $300 billion or $400 billion a year … because they’d be doing it under the Clean Air Act,” he said.

“That would quadruple the amount of money it would cost,” said Inhofe, making the cost in the range of $1.2 trillion to $1.6 trillion annually.

Inhofe said not only would it be the most expensive tax hike in history, far above even Obamacare, but the effort would be a singular failure, because emissions limits would have no impact on industries outside the United States.

Significant emissions now are from the unregulated industries of Mexico, India and China, he said.
“Number 1, it wouldn’t accomplish what you want,” he said. “[But you would be getting back] to the largest tax increase in history.”

He said all of the evidence today indicates scientists who support global warming have “cooked the books” on the science.

He said the ultimate goal of supporters of global warming efforts isn’t just money, either.
“Once you control carbon, you control the world,” he said.

Inhofe, in a recent interview with WND, noting he’s the incoming ranking Republican member of the Senate’s Armed Services Committee, said while he will continue working against global warming strategies, he also will strive to protect the free world.

“There’s a big difference today from the old Soviet Union and the Cold War,” Inhofe told WND. “I look back wistfully at those days, as bad as they were.”

He said that during the years of rocket-rattling by Nikita Kruschev and other Soviet leaders, at least the “enemy” was a rational human who, although politics and priorities differed vastly, wanted to remain alive.
That’s no longer the case, Inhofe said. And to compound the problem, there no longer is a single Soviet bear looming on the horizon. There are dozens, perhaps more, renegade and radical dictators who would like to stage a surprise attack on the United States.

Back then, too, American presidents wanted a powerfully armed U.S. military, but Barack Obama is dedicated to social experiments and no longer desires that, Inhofe told WND.

He said liberals in Washington believe America doesn’t need a military.

“I know,” he said, “I deal with these people.”

He said the possibilities of a failed U.S. military are too horrible to comprehend.
“Take 9/11 and multiply that by 100,” said Inhofe.