Blogs: Right Wing Cap and Trade Nonsense

I received a note from a reader about a post picked up by right wing bloggers claiming that proposed Cap and Trade legislation would require the owner of a home to get a federal license before they could sell their home.

...Beginning 1 year after enactment of the Cap and Trade Act, you won’t be able to sell your home unless you retrofit it to comply with the energy and water efficiency standards of this Act. H.R. 2454, the “Cap & Trade” bill passed by the House of Representatives, if also passed by the Senate, will be the largest tax increase any of us has ever experienced..

The author of this fraudulent right wing screed, knowing the gullibility of these readers goes so far as to say:

...we encourage you to read the provisons of the Cap and Trade Bill that has passed the House of representatives and being considered by the Senate...

99.99% of the perpetually susceptible will not bother to read the bill.

Think about it. If there was a provision as described in any piece of legislation,we would have been flooded with advertisements, news release and the like from everyone starting with the real estate industry, the banks and the title insurance companies.

In order to to deprive all of these right wing wing nuts from driving up their readership, I am not providing a link but am providing a copy for the curious:

We encourage you to read the provisions of the Cap and Trade Bill that has passed the House of Representatives and being considered by the Senate. We are ready to join the next march on Washington!

This Congress and whoever on their staffs that write this junk are truly out to destroy the middle class of the USA….

A License Required for your house

Thinking about selling your house – A look at H.R. 2454 (Cap and trade bill) This is unbelievable!

Only the beginning from this administration! Home owners take note & tell your friends and relatives who are home owners!

Beginning 1 year after enactment of the Cap and Trade Act, you won’t be able to sell your home unless you retrofit it to comply with the energy and water efficiency standards of this Act. H.R. 2454, the “Cap & Trade” bill passed by the House of Representatives, if also passed by the Senate, will be the largest tax increase any of us has ever experienced.

The Congressional Budget Office (supposedly non-partisan) estimates that in just a few years the average cost to every family of four will be $6,800 per year.
No one is excluded.

However, once the lower classes feel the pinch in their wallets, you can be sure these voters get a tax refund (even if they pay no taxes at all) to offset this new cost. Thus, you Mr. and Mrs. Middle Class America will have to pay even more since additional tax dollars will be needed to bail out everyone else.

But wait. This awful bill (that no one in Congress has actually read) has many more surprises in it. Probably the worst one is this:

• A year from now you won’t be able to sell your house. Yes, you read that right.

The caveat is (there always is a caveat) that if you have enough money to make required major upgrades to your home, then you can sell it. But, if not, then forget it. Even pre-fabricated homes (”mobile homes”) are included.

• In effect, this bill prevents you from selling your home without the permission of the EPA administrator.
• To get this permission, you will have to have the energy efficiency of your home measured.
• Then the government will tell you what your new energy efficiency requirement is and you will be forced to make modifications to your home under the retrofit provisions of this Act to comply with the new energy and water efficiency requirements.
• Then you will have to get your home measured again and get a license (called a “label” in the Act) that must be posted on your property to show what your efficiency rating is; sort of like the Energy Star efficiency rating label on your refrigerator or air conditioner.
• If you don’t get a high enough rating, you can’t sell. And, the EPA administrator is authorized to raise the standards every year, even above the automatic energy efficiency increases built into the Act.

The EPA administrator, appointed by the President, will run the Cap & Trade program (AKA the “American Clean Energy and Security Act of 2009″) and is authorized to make any future changes to the regulations and standards he alone determines to be in the government’s best interest. Requirements are set low initially so the bill will pass Congress; then the Administrator can set much tougher new standards every year.

• The Act itself contains annual required increases in energy efficiency for private and commercial residences and buildings.
• However, the EPA administrator can set higher standards at any time.

Sect. 202:

Building Retrofit Program mandates a national retrofit program to increase the energy efficiency of all existing homes across America .

Beginning 1 year after enactment of the Act, you won’t be able to sell your home unless you retrofit it to comply with the energy and water efficiency standards of this Act.

You had better sell soon, because the standards will be raised each year and will be really hard (i.e., ex$pen$ive) to meet in a few years. Oh, goody! The Act allows the government to give you a grant of several thousand dollars to comply with the retrofit program requirements if you meet certain energy efficiency levels. But, wait, the State can set additional requirements on who qualifies to receive the grants.

You should expect requirements such as “can’t have an income of more than $50K per year”, “home selling price can’t be more than $125K”, or anything else to target the upper middle class (and that’s YOU) and prevent them from qualifying for the grants.
Most of us won’t get a dime and will have to pay the entire cost of the retrofit out of our own pockets. More transfer of wealth, more “change you can believe in.”

Sect. 204:
Building Energy Performance Labeling Program establishes a labeling program that for each individual residence will identify the achieved energy efficiency performance for “at least 90 percent of the residential market within 5 years after the date of the enactment of this Act.”

This means that within 5 years 90% of all residential homes in the U.S. must be measured and labeled. The EPA administrator will get $50M each year to enforce the labeling program. The Secretary of the Department of Energy will get an additional $20M each year to help enforce the labeling program. Some of this money will, of course, be spent on coming up with tougher standards each year.

Oh, the label will be like a license for your car. You will be required to post the label in a conspicuous location in your home and will not be allowed to sell your home without having this label.

And, just like your car license, you will probably be required to get a new label every so often – maybe every year.

But, the government estimates the cost of measuring the energy efficiency of your home should only cost about $200 each time.

Remember what they said about the auto smog inspections when they first started: that in California it would only cost $15. That was when the program started. Now the cost is about $50 for the inspection and certificate; a 333% increase. Expect the same from the home labeling program.

Sect. 304:
Greater Energy Efficiency in Building Codes establishes new energy efficiency guidelines for the National Building Code and mandates at 304(d), Application of National Code to State and Local Jurisdictions, that 1 year after enactment of this Act, all state and local jurisdictions must adopt the National Building Code energy efficiency provisions or must obtain a certification from the federal government that their state and/or local codes have been brought into full compliance with the National Building Code energy efficiency standards.

Here is the response of one person who knows about this:

1. As passed, the bill does not create a federal energy audit requirement for real-estate property. It exempts existing homes and buildings from any federal guidelines for new-construction energy labeling. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency will be prohibited from regulating carbon emissions from residential and commercial buildings under the Clean Air Act.

2. The bill would create a national building code with a goal of improving energy efficiency for *new* construction. States would have a year to bring their codes in compliance with the federal code….

Comments

[Tim E.]

The houses we build for Habitat for Humanity are already meeting Energy Star requirements. Given that our homes need to be low cost and we can still meet Energy Star through good and responsible building practices tells me that this is the right thing to do and will not add significantly to the cost. And, the more building that is done under the requirements, the more standard the materials and practices become, bring the cost back down to the mean again. An improvement all around.

[Dan Gallo]

Cap and Trade is nonsense, itself. It is just another way for government to force its way into our lives. You liberals carp about "right wing-nuts", but, they're certainly no worse than "left wing-nuts". I moved to Texas in the late 1960's to get away from the "Rust Belt" areas of Cleveland, Detroit, Chicago, and Milwaukee. The only list that those cities rank high on are the poverty list. And the one common element at play is their penchant for electing democrats over and over again. Texas has remained immune from the nation's high unemployment rates thanks to low taxes, no state income tax, small government, and a business-friendly atmosphere. Plus, Texas is a Right to Work state. Whenever I visit Detroit, the city left barren by democrats and unions, I cringe at what I see. I remember, so well, the Great Lakes Area of my youth. Get smart, people. You will NEVER claw your way back to prosperity with government hand-outs. Trickle up poverty isn't the answer.

[William Zwick]

As outrageous as this sounds ( And IS ) many people are nieve enough to believe it. This is just ANOTHER piece of extreme right wing Republican garbage that floods the internet. Want to hear more half truths and outright lies watch the Fox News Channel.

[Robin Gildersleeve]

Much of what has been said is correct and some of it is supposition. The problem is our law makers never write anything that is definitive. And of course that keeps our courts busy attempting to interpret the law. This congress will change in 2011, but I don't know if it will be an improvement until our members of government are required to live with the decisions they make, the same as their constituents are. The very nieve people are the ones that think mankind can control global environment. We just had five major earthquakes and a volcanic eruption. Is there anybody that knows how to control these?

[Katie]

You posted a very short response stating that this only applies to "new" construction--still very intrusive on the part of the Federal government. The bigger concern here is that you did not offer any kind of response or explanation about the "retrofit" portion of this new mandate which would affect millions of existing homes.

[Sam Adams]

And you "know" (as fact?) that the original email came from a "right wing nut"? Really? Maybe just the same stereotyping the Dems have been so good at as of late? Sort of like Obama and Dems saying that the core of Tea Party movement was just "right wing nutjobs" when polls have recently been released showing that the Tea Party movement (go ahead, google "teabagger") is made up of the same demographics as the U.S. and there are more Indpendents than Republicans. It should come as no suprise that misinformation exists and people actually believe it, Government has it's hands in our pockets and now controls autos (GM), insurance(AIG), mortgages (Fannie and Freddie), financials (Citi, et al) and now healthcare. None of this would have been thought conceivable - even under the last Dem President - Clinton. People are just tired of Government interference - being told what they can and cannot do over and over again. That's not just a right-wing nut job's complaints but complaints the majority of Americans have right now. I think increasing efficiency standards is fine, just not in the manner that Congress has set about doing it. Again, good intentions but the process and the end result is greatly flawed. Your attempt to demean, label and criticize everything as "trash" adds no significant value.

[Ken T]

Obama himself said that electricity costs would double or triple. What is true is that one of his advisors husband owns one of the only window companies that is approved for the new retrofit program. How convenient.. The theory is right, the way it is being foisted on the American public is worse than bad. The Teabaggers are just citizens that are scared and mad that they think they have lost control of their lives. That there isnt anything they can do to stop the intrusion into their lives by Washington. More are joining their ranks from all sides of the political spectrum and the Dems and the rest of those that think they are in power, not the people, had better listen. They will vote as a block against what is going on, If that doesnt work, look out for what comes next. Politicians, do not underestimate the will of The American Citizen.

[Fred]

"99.99% of the perpetually susceptible will not bother to read the bill."

If you're referring to Congress, this is probably the only part of your rant that resembles reality.

[Luddite]

Through happenstance -- Googling on the Cap & Trade bill -- I came across this nonsense posted by Mr. Soglin. Soglin begins by calling the material discussed above a "fraudulent right wing screed", but refuses to actually cite the source. For good reason. Had this ersatz blogger been just a little honest -- just a little -- he would have noted that the source was that evil bunch, the NACHI. The NACHI! The National Association of Certified Home Inspectors (http://www.nachi.org/forum/f14/cap-and-trade-license-required-your-home-44750/). Horrors! Them wing-nuts be everywhere. Take a look at the other RRR (Radical Right Rants) stuff: www.google.com/ search?hl= en&source=hp&ie=ISO-8859- 1&q=A+License+ required+ for+your+ home-+Cap+ and+Trade&btnG=Google+ Search. And after you're all done there's still one basic question -- what precisely are Waxman's Cap & Trade Bill's requirements for residential retrofit. If it's anywhere close to what the NACHI wing-nuts say, we're in for a heap of trouble.

[Raquel C. Rodriguez-Diego]

Maybe it is all a right wing menufactured lie, however, in times like these, when local government, all the way to the top (including the President ) are finding ways to cut costs, laying off teachers, police force, fire dept, benefits etc. Private companies have cut down payroll expenses by laying off workers or implementing a 10% cut in wages, a large number of small businesses have closed down... but I have not heard of one polititian, senator, members of Congress taking a cut in their wages, stopping or cutting down their personal expenses, paying into Social Security, paying for their own medical insurance or taking a cut in their benefits. All we hear about is tax increases, cut in salaries, closing down companies. HOW ABOUT THE GOVERNMENT ENPLOYEES? HOW ABOUT ALL THOSE PEOPLE MAKING OVER $200,000.00 taking a 10% cut in salary? That would be too simple...
Good luck to all of you who think that socialism or communism will NEVER be allowed in America... think again, beacuse it's already here. When government takes over the medical institutions, the auto industry, the public utilities, the banks, WATCH OUT, because it is slready happening.