The Carbon Tax Porkfest
Pelosi buys off agri-business to advance climate bill
What began as a liberal crusade to slow manmade global warming is increasingly becoming a porkfest for well-connected corporations.
In order to get a vote today on greenhouse gas restrictions, House Democrats have bought off farm-state lawmakers with gifts to the farm lobby and the ethanol and agri-chemical industries–gifts that further undermine the legislation’s purported environmental benefits.
Monsanto and Archer Daniels Midland, two of the environmentalists’ corporate enemies, now stand to profit handsomely from the Waxman-Markey bill’s cap-and-trade scheme aimed at reducing greenhouse gas emissions in the hope of slowing the shift in climate.
Rep. Collin Peterson, D-Minn., chairman of the House Agriculture Committee, held a hearing earlier this month on the “American Clean Energy and Security Act,” sponsored by Reps. Henry Waxman, D-Calif., and Ed Markey, D-Mass. Committee members asked, on behalf of farmers, agri-business, and the agri-chemical industry, “what’s in this for us?”
Peterson, according to the environmentalist website Grist, demanded concessions from Waxman and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., or else he would lead a bloc of three dozen farm-state lawmakers to kill the bill in the House. At the expense of whatever credibility remained in Waxman-Markey’s claim to affect the climate, Pelosi and Waxman gave the agri-lobby two significant gifts.
First, they bought off the ethanol lobby, led by Archer Daniels Midland, the National Corn Growers Association, the Renewable Fuels Association, and the Corn Refiners Association.
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