DANIEL WEISS: This bill is about two big things: first, shifting investments into clean-energy technologies of the future, wind and solar power and energy efficiency; second, it's about saving consumers money.
EPA just came out with a study earlier this week that said it would save the average household about $84 in utility bills every year, and so it's going to create jobs, and save people money, and, by the way, fight pollution.
And "by the way, fight pollution", what do you mean by the way...that's the whole point!!!! And what does pollution cost us? How much money is poured into the health care system to pay for the effects of pollution?
JUDY WOODRUFF: Karen Harbert, you point out that you and the chamber want cleaner energy, but this is the wrong way to do it.
KAREN HARBERT, U.S. Chamber of Commerce: Well, we do think it's the wrong way to do it. We want to have a cleaner environment, but we also want to have a healthy economy.
And I'm afraid that this legislation will make it more expensive for businesses to do business here at home. It will make them less competitive overseas. And that's not really smart policy, and particularly not at this economic juncture in our...
What about an environmental tax on imports whose manufacturing processes create more "pollution" than products made in the US produce. Is Karen saying if others countries get to pollute then it's ok if we do? If US manufacturers are held to a higher environmental standard than manufacturers overseas then either don't bring the products in or charge them a pollution tax.
T
he issue of cost
JUDY WOODRUFF: Why do you think it's going to cost businesses more? The president today was arguing that ultimately Americans are going to pay less or, in the short term, Americans are going to pay less for energy.
KAREN HARBERT: Well, the reason the bill is 1,200 pages and growing as we speak is because it's very complex. And they're proposing a number of offsets to industries that are going to bear more costs. And if they're going to be bearing more costs, they're going to pass those costs onto the consumer.
American business is not in the business of philanthropy, and so they're going to have to have somebody pay for these things, so it's going to be the consumer and the taxpayer.
JUDY WOODRUFF: The consumer is the one who's going to pay the bill?
DANIEL WEISS: Well, I appreciate Karen's arguments, but the Congressional Budget Office and EPA said the cost is going to be small overall, about the price of a postage stamp for overall products costs. And for electricity, the average consumer is going to save money. So I'm going to listen to the CBO and EPA and their independent analyses of what this bill will do.
Nobel Prize-winning economist Paul Krugman said that what this will do is this will actually jump-start our economy and help get the recovery going because it will stimulate investments in new industries.
JUDY WOODRUFF: How do you know that's wrong?
KAREN HARBERT: I don't know that mandates stimulate anything. Mandates are mandates to change behavior, and they're going to bring up costs for the business community to actually operate. If energy is going to be more expensive and products are going to be more expensive, that is, frankly, a cost that the consumer is going to bear.
So the cost of the postage stamp, though, is interesting. The Congressional Budget Office said, We didn't take into account what was going to happen after 2020.
2020 is when all the allocations aren't free any longer and there's real costs, so I'd like the CBO to actually do an analysis of the full bill and take into account some of the job losses that are going to go overseas.
DANIEL WEISS: Well, it's important to note, they also didn't take into account the savings from reducing the threat of global warming: fewer droughts, fewer floods, less smog, less tropical diseases. None of that's included.
Yes!!!!! Thank you. How much does a drought cost? What is the cost of smog? Those are the real costs!!! The same can be said of toilet paper made from either virgin forests or post consumer paper, as I have said many times. The price at the cash wrap is not the real cost. We have to think of our children and grand-children. How much will a drought cost them.
Nor does it include energy efficiency. So the number is a conservative, cautious one that doesn't include many of the benefits of this bill.
JUDY WOODRUFF: And, in other words, there are other savings in this bill that aren't even...
DANIEL WEISS: That's right, that no one calculated
How cap and trade would work
JUDY WOODRUFF: Let's talk just briefly about cap and trade. Most people still don't exactly understand how it would work. Explain how it would work and why you think it's positive.
DANIEL WEISS: A cap-and-trade system is a tried-and-true mechanism that we use right now to control the pollution that causes acid rain. What it does is, it puts a limit on pollution, and everybody has to have a permit for every ton of pollution they emit. The less you emit, the fewer permits you have to buy, and the more money you save. The more you emit, the more permits you have to have.
KAREN HARBERT: It's a very simple mechanism; that is without a doubt. But I don't understand why that takes 1,200 or 1,400 pages to explain it to the American public.
JUDY WOODRUFF: But is your disagreement that people don't understand it or that you think the way it works is not the way that will serve your interest, the interests of members of the Chamber of Commerce who you represent?
KAREN HARBERT: Well, quite frankly, we've seen it operate in Europe, and it caused price increases in Europe, it caused job-shedding in Europe, and we still haven't seen any environmental benefit from that. In fact, CO-2 has gone up in Europe.
So we have a living, breathing example right across the Atlantic Ocean. We should learn from that. We should do this smartly. It's not that we shouldn't do something; we just need to do it more smartly.
JUDY WOODRUFF: Dan Weiss, we heard the president say that this is going to create jobs. How can you be certain that it will do that?
DANIEL WEISS: Well, we did an economic model, done by the University of Massachusetts, that factored in all the provisions in this bill and calculated it will create at least 1.7 million new jobs. And these are jobs in things like manufacturing of steel, the construction industry, people going to work putting in new windows. These are jobs for the most part that can't be outsourced.
And, Karen, you'll be pleased to know that people are starting to catch on to cap and trade. The Washington Post just had a poll today that said more than half the people in the country support cap and trade as a way to reduce global warming pollution and about 75 percent support action now. So you'll be pleased to know the American people are catching on.
Unfortunately we won't really know if this works until implemented for a number of years. And, not to constantly repeat myself and bore you to death but all the costs need to be calculated including the environmental costs.
Effects on the U.S. economy
JUDY WOODRUFF: What about the jobs question, though, about whether jobs will be created and, if so, how many?
KAREN HARBERT: You know, there are as many analyses of this bill as there are flavors of ice cream. The National Black Chamber of Commerce also did an analysis and ran an economic model, and its conclusion was, after you take into account the green jobs that it may create, we're actually going to lose between 2.3 million and 2.7 million jobs.
So I think your question is a good one. How do we know? And what is the right answer? We need CBO and others to do a thorough economic analysis of whatever this bill is going to look like tonight.
Exactly, how do we know? But if we wait until the Republicans implement a plan it will be too late. The Bush II administration left us 16 years behind, 8 years destroying any legislation that could help the environment and/or the economy and another 8 years of wasted time that the economy and environment could be improving.
JUDY WOODRUFF: Just quickly, Karen Harbert, the president also said that this legislation provides assistance to businesses and families to make the transition to cleaner energy. Do you buy that?
KAREN HARBERT: You know, I'm not sure that's good news that right now what we're proposing is that it's going to be -- the costs of complying with this regulation are going to be so high that now the taxpayer has to pay American business to stay in business. I'm not sure that really makes sense.
Why is the taxpayer paying American business to stay competitive? So it means that the regulatory scheme is too onerous and too expensive to just stay in business.
JUDY WOODRUFF: What about that argument?
DANIEL WEISS: Well, we've used this system before to reduce the sulfur emissions that cause acid rain, and it came in at one-quarter of the price that EPA predicted, not to mention the even more higher price that the utility industry predicted.
I don't know what she's talking about with taxes and people paying business and all that sort of thing.
What this bill does is, it provides a smooth economic transition for companies and families to move into a clean-energy future. As the president said, the country that controls the clean-energy technologies of the future are going to be the ones that dominate the world economy.
We're behind. We've spent eight years doing nothing. Germany leads in solar energy; China's going to be leading in wind. We need to catch up. And this bill will launch the investments that will do that.
Exactly!!
KAREN HARBERT: The American economy is actually number one in wind. We produce more wind than any other country in the world, and I hope that continues to grow.
But when you take wind and solar together in this country, they provide 1.3 percent of the nation's electricity. So we need to approach this thoughtfully, constructively, and don't rush it so that we bankrupt our economy.
Bankrupt our economy, that's so ironic that she would say that. Our economy is already bankrupted thanks to in large part the previous republican administration who's political philosophy is similar to hers. The republicans screamed deregulation and it's screaming it now. Well what happens when you let these large corporations run amuck. She is right, "American business is not in the business of philanthropy". Most of them are in the business of short term profits. And who pays for the mess they create? We do, the consumers, the taxpayers. We get to pay for cleaning up the mess now and we are sick and tired of it. Lets keep them making a mess now so our children don't have to pay for it latter.
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