The U.S. House of Representatives today passed the American Clean Energy and Security Act. If you ask any member of Congress what they passed, they will be unable to tell you, as the bill is many hundreds of pages long and was amended at the last minute with a few hundred more pages. No one who voted on the bill knew what he or she was really voting on, but they passed it anyways.

Every analysis I have read on this legislation has shown that it will harm our economy. Granted, no totally accurate analysis could be done because the total bill was not available for analysis before being passed, but the studies used what information was available on the bill’s major provisions. Not only do the studies show the harm the economy will suffer, they expose the ultimate lack of effect the bill will have on reducing CO2 emissions, even assuming that such a thing is needed or desirable.

Comments from my local representatives make it apparent that the message they got from their constituents is that they are overwhelmingly opposed to passage of the bill. I know that it is an assumption, but I will assume that this was what most of the representatives experienced. If so, and they passed the bill anyways, what does that mean? It means once again that our government wants to be our nanny and make us do “the right thing” whether we want to or not, and whether it is good for us or not. Drink that cod liver oil, damn it!

It seems that our government is determined to destroy out economy. The requirements in this bill will cause all goods manufactured in the United States to rise in price due to the need to cover the increased costs of energy, record keeping, additional equipment, etc. It would seem that someone recognized the fact that this would result in manufactured goods being purchased from cheaper, overseas sources and allowances were made to place tariffs on those goods to prevent an inequitable situation. But comments from President Obama seem to indicate that it isn’t enough to destroy our manufacturing base, he prefers to avoid any compensatory economic sanctions.

The Washington Post reported that Obama said, “At a time when the economy worldwide is still deep in recession and we’ve seen a significant drop in global trade, I think we have to be very careful about sending any protectionist signals out there.” Huh? It’s okay to screw every U.S. manufacturer but we sure don’t want to hurt the worldwide economy? This kind of thinking is so wrongheaded as to boggle the mind. Hell, the entire energy bill qualifies for that.

It is irritating and frustrating to read discussions of this legislation. There are studies that claim that this bill will increase a family’s energy costs by a few thousand dollars a year. Other studies claim that there will be very little cost increase. Then there are other studies that try to reconcile the two opposing studies by concluding that, well, yeah, it will cost everyone more money, but nowhere near as much as several thousand a year. Why in the hell should we be forced to pay any additional money for our energy costs?

If this bill is passed and President Obama signs it into law, we are going to be sucking hind tit in the world economy in no time. We will be spending billions of dollars on efforts that will yield no real benefit but that will cost thousands of manufacturing jobs, not to mention the creation of a bureaucracy that will do nothing but grow and grow, just like every other government agency. I’m afraid that I see no end to this kind of thinking in our Capitol. I only hope that we can change the course of this ship before we hit the iceberg.