How can the American Clean Energy and Security Act be justified to Americans during this severe recession? It is the worst of special interest pork barrels. It costs the taxpayers, current and future, dearly but provides no benefits. What reasonable person would buy off on this? In other words, how can the public be goaded into suspending reason.
Mat Welch, Editor in Chief of Reason Magazine, showcases the perennial argument of the demagogues to grow government and their own importance. “The Cost of Doing Something” is something we truly cannot afford!
On the eve of what would be a 219-212 House of Representatives vote in favor of the American Clean Energy and Security Act, the New York Times editorial board argued that whatever the bill’s eventual price tag, it sure beat “the costs of doing nothing.” Warned the Gray Lady: “By any measure—drought, famine, coastal devastation—the costs of inaction, of clinging to a broken energy policy, will dwarf the costs of acting now.”
If that argument sounds familiar, it is. Times columnist Paul Krugman, while declaring those 212 nay votes guilty of “treason against the planet,” posited that “we’re facing a clear and present danger to our way of life, perhaps even to civilization itself.” Therefore, “How can anyone justify failing to act?”
The same logic, minus some of the apocalyptic language, is being used this summer to push through President Barack Obama’s other massively expensive overhaul to the way America does business: health care reform. “I can assure you,” the president said recently in Green Bay, Wisconsin, “the cost of doing nothing is going to be a lot higher in the years to come. Our deficits will be higher. Our premiums will keep going up. Our wages will be lower. Our jobs will be fewer. Our businesses will suffer.” Echoed Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius a week later: “The cost of doing nothing will render us a second rate nation on into the future.” Rep. George Miller (D-Calif.), in subsequent House hearings, went still further: “There is not one child, not one worker, not one employer, nor one taxpayer who can further bear the cost of doing nothing.”
Hyperbole aside, the urge to have the government do something in the face of a perceived crisis is arguably the most powerful and effective legislative engine known to man. If the crisis is acute enough, backers of state intervention will even admit that content matters less than the mere existence of action itself. During the height of last fall’s financial panic, for example, New York Mayor and financial journalism titan Michael Bloomberg said on NBC’s “Meet the Press” that “Nobody knows exactly what they should do, but anything is better than nothing.” As the House of Representatives was passing the stimulus package this February, Rep. David Obey (D-Wisc.), chairman of the House Appropriations Committee, thundered that “the cost of doing nothing would be catastrophic.” Auto bailout? “The cost of doing nothing is cataclysmic,” warned Sen. Bob Casey (D-Penn.) last December.
Read his full article on the link provided and just hope that the American people are a bit more intelligent than the ruling classes and charlatans think they are!
Tom Motherway, tom@renohayek.com