James Pethokoukis

Kevin Williamson of National Review doesn’t think much of the CBO report that finds a climate change bill would reduce the deficit by $19 billion:

That piffling $19 billion deficit reduction is achieved by imposing a tax hike of three-quarters of a trillion dollars — the CBO puts the number at $751 billion — on the American people, and then spending all but the last $19 billion of the revenue generated. Here’s a radical idea: If you want to reduce the deficit by a (paltry, embarrassingly tiny, too slightly to really seriously mention it) $19 billion, how about you just pass a $19 billion tax hike and skip the part where you spend more than the cost of the Iraq War creating a new politically driven securities market to chase marginal atmospheric benefits related to the emission of carbon dioxide, which is not even the most important greenhouse gas? For perspective, you could just cancel the Depression-era farm-income stabilization program and save a nice round $20 billion.

That $19 billion in savings is great — if you only look at the balance sheet at Treasury and ignore cap-and-trade’s effects on the economy, the actual economy that exists out there in the real world. The Obama administration estimates the cost of cap-and-trade at 1 percent of GDP per year ($146 billion dollars), scholars at the Heritage Foundation put it at $393 billion per year, and others have estimated even higher costs. You know what the Obama administration’s numbers and the Heritage Foundation’s numbers have in common? They’re all a heck of a lot more than $19 billion — orders of magnitude bigger.