Other people are getting paid by the federal government so why shouldn’t we? That’s the sentiment coming from the forest industry over reducing carbon dioxide emissions. This is how a bad bill becomes a bad law. When there’s money up for grabs, special interests and their lobbyists swarm like bees to honey seeking to protect or improve their bottom line. Inevitably, few win at the expense of many. And when you can get paid not to do anything, all the better. Jessica Leber of E&E (password required) reports:
About 15 of the 50 coalition members are spending this week arguing that 5 percent of cap-and-trade revenue be devoted to domestic forest and land conservation. That’s compared to about 1.2 percent proposed by Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.) and Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) and on par with the money slated to protect rain forests outside of U.S. borders.
Advocates say they want the funding to stem decades of forest losses fueled by struggling landowners facing intense pressure to harvest their trees or sell to housing developers. [..] Landowners already stand to gain through a climate bill’s offset program, under which they could sell credits to balance fossil-fuel emissions under a carbon cap. A proposal by Sen. Debbie Stabenow (D-Mich.), which could be folded into a final Senate bill, includes a beefed-up domestic offset program with a specific carve-out for farm and forest projects.”
Laurie Wayburn, president of the conservation group Pacific Forest Trust said, “In the energy and alternative energy sectors, the public is investing a great deal in helping entrepreneurs develop technologies that reduce carbon emissions. Land does this naturally, but it doesn’t do this for free. Landowners can’t do this just out of their goodwill.” Wade Mosby, a senior VP for a timber company echoed Wayburn’s sentiments, saying, “I think we’re providing a lot of environmental benefits to the entire public, but we don’t get paid for it.”
So who would get paid for and who wouldn’t? Do you only qualify if you have more than ten acres of forests? Are trees that capture more carbon than others worth more? Do synthetic trees count? With the trillions of dollars in carbon (energy tax) revenue available through a cap and trade system it’s no wonder the forestry industry is chomping at the bit.
If there’s a market for conservation, it should be driven by the private sector, not a newly-created, artificial market for a clear, odorless gas that will be funded by all Americans. Pacific Forest Trust, for instance, makes payments to a tree farm “in return for an agreement to never subdivide its land and always maintain a sustainable forest.” Nature Conservancy and Ducks Unlimited purchase land to create and protect habitats and establish wildlife preserves. Ironically, environmentalists are challenging Ted Turner’s attempt to save wildlife. The billionaire is seeking to restore bison wildlife through buying property in Montana before the remaining 88 bison from Yellowstone National Park are slaughtered.
This rent-seeking strategy of invested companies and individuals is keeping the idea of reducing carbon dioxide emissions alive and well. Now it’s just a matter of convincing the queen bee they deserve more honey.
After thousands of Americans attended hundreds of townhalls this summer, after the President of the United States delivered a rare speech to a Joint Session of Congress, after endless coverage of legislative markups in the relevant congressional committees, what if the Senate began actual floor votes on the health care overhaul and the drive-by media refused to cover it? Couldn’t happen? It already is.
This week the Senate is set to vote on a measure that would approve spending for almost one quarter of Obamacare’s $1 trillion price tag. Sen. Debbie Stabenow (D-MI) has introduced, and Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) is moving to the floor, S. 1776 which, as we explained yesterday, raises Medicare provider reimbursement rates by $247 billion over the next ten years and $3 trillion over the next 75. Under current law, doctors nationwide are set to take a 21.5% pay cut for every Medicare patient they see starting in January 2010. Such a cut could lead many doctors to abandon Medicare patients, thus significantly undermining our entire health care system.
Doctor’s reimbursement rates do need to be fixed. But such a fix should be part of comprehensive reform of our health care system. Instead, Reid and the White House are trying to pull a fast one on the American people, claiming “the Medicare doctors’ payment discrepancy is a budgetary problem” while “health insurance reform tackles a serious regulatory problem.” The Obama administration is trying to add $247 billion in deficit health care spending one week, and then turn around and claim their health care plan is deficit neutral the next. The trickery has come in for some heavy bi-partisan criticism. Sen. Kent Conrad (D-N.D.) said he thought the tactic is a “mistake”, and Sen. Evan Bayh (D-IN) told Politico: “I am for the fix, but I don’t think we should blow the roof off the deficit — not at a time when we are already running record deficits.”
Robert Bixby, Director of the nonpartisan, grassroots Concord Coalition clearly articulates why the Medicare reimbursement fix should be considered part of health care reform:
Dealing with the ‘doc fix’ in a separate bill, outside of health care reform, would change the scoring of the bills but not the effect on the deficit. If policymakers believe that the current SGR [Sustainable Growth Rate] formula is unrealistic, they should replace it with a more appropriate policy and pay for the change in keeping with their pledge to reform health care in a deficit-neutral way. If paying for this SGR change means there would be fewer offsets on the table to pay for expanded coverage, then policymakers would be forced to appropriately weigh their priorities and make the necessary tough choices — either scale back other costs in the health reform package or find more ways to pay for the larger bill.
The Tea Party movement that swept the nation this summer is already making life difficult for politicians that say they care about deficit spending but then support policies that undermine that goal. The Boston Tea Party of 1773 set the stage for the Declaration of Independence in 1776. Will the debate over S.1776 set the stage for something much larger and important?
Quick Hits:
- Not wanting to admit their $787 billion stimulus failed, the Obama administration is planning a “Stealth Stimulus” expected to cost another $100 billion.
- According to a new Politico poll, 62% of Americans agreed that “economic growth should be given priority, even if the environment suffers to some extent.”
- Just two weeks after agreeing to send its nuclear fuel to Russia and France for enrichment, Iran is already threatening to back away from the agreement.
- The Senate Finance Committee finally produced the legislative text of their health care bill yesterday, all 1,502 pages of it.
- The Canadian dollar is now almost at parity with its U.S. counterpart.