CLEAR gets KO'd For Now - Granite Grok

CLEAR gets KO’d For Now

Oil and GasWith bi-partisan support the Senate has blocked a new energy tax passed by the House that would have hit the middle class and working families right in their shrinking wallets.  The CLEAR act, a job killing tax raising attempt by House democrats beholden to radical environmentalists, would have driven energy industry jobs out of America by the thousands while raising taxes on oil and natural gas.  It also would have increased our dependency on foreign energy, enriching countries that just a few years ago the democrats were claiming should not be getting wealthy on the backs of hard working Americans.  Yet here we are with 10% or more of the population out of work or underemployed  and the disconnected ruling-class House democrats are passing massive new energy taxes and shifting more American dollars off shore to places they themselves have said do not have our best interests at heart.

Morons? Hard to tell. This looks like an intentional effort to make energy more expensive so their green lobby campaign donors and the deep pocketed environmental justice crowd can make the even more expensive ‘so-called’ alternative more attractive.  Whatever the goal the pain and suffering this new tax burden and job loss would place upon average families, and single moms with kids is unconscionable and the left could care less.

Democrats have once again sold their souls on the altar of their special interest donors and offered up hard working Americans as the sacrifice, using one event to advance a manifold of burdensome regulations and taxes.  So any day now we can expect some kind of two-faced base-kissing left wing rhetoric attacking the bi-partisan effort of democrats and Republicans in the senate to come up with a solution that won’t drive away more jobs or make just getting by that more impossible.  They will of course leave out the bi-partisan objection but there is good reason for it; CLEAR does nothing to solve the systemic issues.

(Heritage has a good round up here.)

The democrats solution (to everything) is a new tax, and to arbitrarily raise the liability cap from 75 million—which everyone agrees is to low–to 10 Billion because that sounds like a number liberals will be impressed with.  But all that will do is drive all the offshore operations—all the jobs, taxes, lease fees, revenue, and domestic commerce from that revenue as well—out of American waters.  This is how democrats make the economy better.  So while the left gets a nice sound bit, “we are holding BP and big oil accountable” they are leaving out the part where they do it by destroying the US energy economy, all the jobs and growth potential they represent, and the workers and families who will be ruined by a whimsical passing desire for more left wing photo op politics in an unpleasant election year.  That means the “hold BP accountable meme” will be plastered under the picture even though BP has accepted responsibility and even ponied up an extra 20 billion in extortion money for good measure.

For the moment, several democrats have decided that the House plan–or Reid’s mutant Senate version, is crap.  In fact, they like the republican plan better.  But it’s not over yet.  (Yes, the Republicans always have a plan, you just never hear about it.) But Reich marshal Reid will never allow the Republican plan to see the light of day.  He is fully prepared to drag his left wing sh*t wagon back out after the August recess and drive it right down your throats because that’s what the new democrat party is all about.  And he’d rather fix nothing at all and blame the GOP than do something that might actually work.  That’s because the Hodes and Seiu-Porter types don’t really give a damn about anything but what the party wants and no new amount of rhetoric will change that.  CLEAR is a bad bill passed by special interest party hacks who don’t care about how their actions impact you or the economy.  That’s why they have to go.

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