Great article, btw. I wrote a similar one on my blog – check your stats – you are probably getting hits from the House of Reps. in DC. I am.

The CBO analysis indeed has many problems, and does not include many impacts — in fact, they clearly state they did not include some projected economic benefits expected from a transition to clean energy sources that would accrue to American households across the economic spectrum. These include savings from energy efficiency; cheaper sources of energy (the price of oil, for example, will inevitably rise as it is a finite resource; consumer prices are always vulnerable to price fluctuations in oil, as we saw last year when the price per barrel skyrocketed and costs were passed through to consumers); lower health costs from reduced pollution; and the increase in payroll and capital gains tax revenue from the much-touted but as-yet-unseen 'green jobs' boom in clean energy & technology. (For example, jobs in building efficiency upgrades or installation of solar panels must be done on American soil and cannot be outsourced overseas.) These benefits are difficult, if not impossible, to calculate but should be mentioned.

Also important to mention are the projected billions in revenue from the sale of carbon permits to polluting industries, set to begin in 2012. Business will do what businesses always do, and pass these costs through to consumers, but the revenue from the carbon auction is to be rebated to taxpayers and lower income families are to receive subsidies paid out of that revenue. As you mentioned, how that would work is still undetermined, and is rife with pitfalls that could undercut any economic benefits if not administered properly.

Up to now, industries have been free to pollute, a perverse incentive with the costs of cleanup passed on to the taxpayer. Forcing pollution-intensive industries to pay for the right to pollute beyond a specified allotment puts the economic incentive on industry to innovate, which history shows they will do when the incentives are there. But a carbon trading regime is rife with dangerous pitfalls and opportunities to game the system, as the EU discovered.

Finally, when considering the bill, voters might also want to ponder the underlying premise — the projection that it will cost far less to transition to clean energy sources now rather than wait until fossil fuel supplies are seriously constrained in the future. How we find common ground as a nation will be very difficult with so many competing interests and needs across the electorate.

Let's look at the big picture here. If the cost is only $175 per household (say 100 million households) per year, then we are talking about roughly $175 million in costs. Let's compare that to the projected (by the CBO) tax revenues to the government of $87.5 BILLION per year. Now, if you think the government is going to raise your taxes by $87.5 billion and yet the citizens will only pay $175 million, then I have a bridge for you in Brooklyn. Those tax costs will be passed on to you. Only $175 million will be direct, visible costs, the rest will be embedded in all your consumer goods passed on to you by the manufacturers, retailers, etc. You will pay more than a "postage stamp" a day, bet on it.

And there is more, the CBO says in it's study: "“The resource cost does not indicate the potential decrease in gross domestic product (GDP) that could result from the cap. The reduction in GDP would also include indirect general equilibrium effects, such as changes in the labor supply resulting from reductions in real wages and potential reductions in the productivity of capital and labor.” Hummmm… so many other indirect effects on the economy are not included as well, and they could be big. In fact, a late amendment to the Climate Tax bill allows for up to 3 years of unemployment benefits for those who lose their jobs, to the tune of up to $40 billion a year. Think it will not effect employment and long term unemployment? Obviously it will, big time.

And there is more. The "postage stamp a day cost" also doesn't take into account the difficulty in estimating the effect of such a complex piece of legislation, and there are several caveats. The study did not excluded several elements of the regime that are difficult to predict, such as how costs to government would be distributed and how subsidies for carbon capture and storage might be allocated.

As the CBO notes, much will depend on how these missing costs and benefits are distributed across different income levels:

“…if most of the omitted costs were to fall on lower-income households while most of the omitted benefits were to fall on higher-income households, the distributional outcomes could be significantly different”.

So you see only a non-critical thinking person would accept at face value a politically spun catch phrase to use as justification not to research and understand this bill much more deeply.

The $3000 figure is a miscalculation from an MIT study, and one of the lead authors of the study has publicly requested people to stop misreading his results. http://beltwayblips.dailyradar.com/story/exclusive_letter_mit_professor_tells_boehner_to_stop/

The non-partisan Congressional Budget Office calculated that the costs of the cap-and-trade bill would be an economy-wide average of $175 per household (not per person) per year through 2020; those numbers further break down to being a net benefit of $40 per year for the lowest income families and $245 for household in the highest economic strata — or about the cost of a postage stamp per day per household.

That's likely the source of Teague's 'postage stamp' comment.

Again, factual numbers are important for making an informed decision on any legislation.

Did Mr. Atkinson read all 1,300 pages? Did Steve Pearce, who Mr. Atkinson is undoubtedly supporting? Did Pearce read ANY 1,300 page bill in his years in Congress? Of course not.

The second hint that this is a nasty political hit job is the estimate of $3,000 per person cost. Even most far-right estimates I've seen aren't in that range.

Looks like more scare tactics, exaggerations, and outlandish double standards from the right. I don't doubt that the event could have been handled better, but the author's transparent bias, unfair double standards, and false data make his account, unfortunately, unreliable.

He did have enough room in Alamogordo, but protestors still complained that they didn't get to talk to him right away. There was a signup sheet, but they wanted their names to be put at the top of the list, I guess.

And WHEN, if ever, did Pearce meet with his constituents in an informal setting like that?

You should have been at the "NM Freedom Project" meeting held at the Cloud Country development east of Cloudcroft. The article advertising the event said "What NMFREEDOMPROJECT supports is free speech…" but no one was allowed to ask questions or make comments. Only the person in charge and one politician (Republican, of course) did any talking.