Why The "Cap and Trade Bill" is Unconstitutional
As we have discussed on other pages, any country that doesn't abide by a "Rule of Law" will be governed by the rule of a man. Any country governed by the rule of A man will become one ruled by a man who becomes a tyrant (as Nazi Germany and Soviet Russia proved) and the country will become a tyranny ruled by a dictator instead of a democratic republic which the United States is supposed to be.
The ultimate rule of law in the United States comes down to The U.S. Constitution including all of the Bill of Rights (the first TEN (10) amendments).
Because the Founders understood that the further a government was from the people the less power it should be given, and the more relative power constituent governments should have, since they are closer to the people. In addition, the more power given to a big central government, the more power that would have to be exercised over the people (with a lessening of individual freedoms) in order for it to control the masses.
The 10th Amendment was set up to provide us with a LIMITED federal government. That is why it said that all powers that were not given to the Federal Government by the Federal Constitution, were denied to it and reserved to the States OR TO THE PEOPLE.
If they know and understand the mandate of the 10th Amendment, how can any member of Congress or the Senate possibly even consider the passage of any Federal law that would impose a national building code on every local city, county and town and require them to tax their people (with property taxes of fees) to employ not one but three separate building inspectors who would have to approve, under Federal guidelines every house that was going to be put up for sale before ti was put on the market? How could any member of Congress possibly consider that the they (or the Federal Government) has the right or power to say what kind of windows, or insulation, or hot water heaters your house would have to have before you could offer your house for sale--or what they would have to have before you could buy a house, even if you wanted different windows, or insulation, or hot water heaters? How could they possibly pass such a bill and not realize that they were violating their oaths of office to "uphold and defend the Constitution of the United States"? How could they do so without realizing that they were changing the American democratic republic into a Nazi dictatorship? Yet that is exactly what your web master saw being done when he saw live on C-Span television, the minority leader of the House of Representatives read these very provisions from a copy of a 3 o'clock AM amendment put into the bill by the democrat majority, and then over the minority objection, vote to pass a bill called the Waxman Cap and trade bill.
Home building codes have (ever since they have existed) always (under the 10th Amendment) been considered to be exclusively a matter for State regulation. There is absolutely NO paragraph, word or phrase in the federal Constitution that can be stretched far enough to allow the Federal government to have any say whatsoever over home building codes. (We at the 10th Amendment Foundation DEFY any member of Congress, the Senate, the Judiciary, or any "constitutional" lawyer to show us where the Federal Government has the constitutionally granted right to have any statutory or regulatory right or power to pass any hoe building Code! The fact is that there is NO such power--not one section; not one paragraph; not one word that gives the Federal Government that power.
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
AN EXAMPLE OF HOW TOTALLY UNCONSTITUTIONAL IT IS.
The American Issues Project ^ | July 8, 2009 | Jimmie Bise and Melissa Clouthier
Posted on July 21, 2009 8:39:26 PM EDT by 2ndDivisionVet
I bet you thought that if you bought a house, you actually own it and can, with reasonable exceptions, do with it what you want. You probably think that if you want to live in a log cabin, with wood stoves that belch smoke into the air for heat, and an old washer and dryer that don't have those little EnergyStar stickers on them you can because it's your life and your property. You paid for it with money you earned with the sweat of your brow and what the heck is America anyhow if a body can't live in the home they want furnished with the appliances they want?
Ah, silly you. You didn't reckon on the Democratic Party's desire to control every miniscule aspect of your life.
Let me introduce you to a little section of the Waxman-Markey cap-and-trade bill called the "Building Energy Performance Labeling Program". It's section 304 of the bill and it says, basically, that your house belongs to the state. See, the Federal Government really wants a country full of energy-efficient homes, so much so that the bill mandates that new homes be 30 percent more energy efficient than the current building code on the very day the law is signed. That efficiency goes up to 50 percent by 2014 and only goes higher from there, all the way to 2030. That, by the way, is not merely a target but a requirement of the law. New homes must reach those efficiency targets no matter what.
But what does that have to do with current homeowners like you? Well, I'm glad you asked. You're certainly not off the hook, no way, no how. Here's what the Democrats have planned for you. The program requires that states label their buildings so that we can all know how efficient every building (that includes residential and non-residential buildings) is and it requires that the information be made public. To that end, the bill suggests a number of circumstances under which the states could inspect a building, including:
(A) preparation, and public disclosure of the label through filing with tax and title records at the time of--
(i) a building audit conducted with support from Federal or State funds;
(ii) a building energy-efficiency retrofit conducted in response to such an audit;
(iii) a final inspection of major renovations or additions made to a building in accordance with a building permit issued by a local government entity;
(iv) a sale that is recorded for title and tax purposes consistent with paragraph (8);
(v) a new lien recorded on the property for more than a set percentage of the assessed value of the property, if that lien reflects public financial assistance for energy-related improvements to that building; or
(vi) a change in ownership or operation of the building for purposes of utility billing; or
(B) other appropriate means.
Pay close attention to (iii), (iv), and (vi) because those hit you right where you live. What that's saying is the state will be empowered to inspect your home if you want to 1) renovate your house in any way that requires a building permit, 2) sell your house, or 3) change the name of the person responsible for any utility bill.
By now, if you haven't swallowed your tongue and are in need of medical attention, you're probably wondering if there's a penalty for not being in compliance with the new efficiency ratings. The answer is no, and yes. Here's where the bill gets really sneaky. So far as I can tell, there is no direct penalty if your house does not meet the bill's target. However, it does require that the number of buildings inspected by the state meet certain percentage targets and if they do not, the state loses out on a significant portion of the money it could get from Washington. In other words, the bill demands certain things from the states, but ties funding for those demands to compliance with the demands.
Did I say the bill gets sneaky? I was wrong. The bill strong-arms the states like a couple mob heavies leaning on a witness in a Rico trial. In turn, the states are going to put the screws to you, so it gets the billions of dollars Washington is dangling in front of them. So while the Federal government won't directly punish you, it will provide the states with lots and lots of rectangular, green reasons to do so.
And it gets worse. The Federal government has graciously offered to help homeowners with the retrofits the states will force them to do through a program called the Retrofit for Energy and Environmental Purposes (REEP). REEP sets aside a pool of money in each state for property owners who have to turn their polar bear-killing buildings into lean, mean, green machines. But, and I'm sure you've guessed this already, there's a catch. Before I get to that, here's the magic formula (and don't read ahead and spoil the surprise!):
(i) AWARDS- For residential buildings-- (I) support for a free or low-cost detailed building energy audit that prescribes, as part of a energy-reducing measures sufficient to achieve at least a 20 percent reduction in energy use, by providing an incentive equal to the documented cost of such audit, but not more than $200, in addition to any earned by achieving a 20 percent or greater efficiency improvement; (II) a total of $1,000 for a combination of measures, prescribed in an audit conducted under subclause (I), designed to reduce energy consumption by more than 10 percent, and $2,000 for a combination of measures prescribed in such an audit, designed to reduce energy consumption by more than 20 percent; (III) $3,000 for demonstrated savings of 20 percent, pursuant to a performance-based building retrofit program; and (IV) $1,000 for each additional 5 percentage points of energy savings achieved beyond savings for which funding is provided under subclause (II) or (III). If you want to hit that 50 percent savings mark that all new homes have to hit, then you can get as much as $12,200, including inspection, as you scoop all those awards. That's a pretty good chunk of change that should cover most, if not all of the costs of a retrofit on any moderately-sized older house, right? Easy, peasy, lemon squeezy.
Except for that catch and boy is it a doozy.
(ii) MAXIMUM PERCENTAGE- Awards under clause (i) shall not exceed 50 percent of retrofit costs for each building. For buildings with multiple residential units, awards under clause (i) shall not be greater than 50 percent of the total cost of retrofitting the building, prorated among individual residential units on the basis of relative costs of the retrofit. Did you get that? You'll be on the hook for half of the cost of the retrofit, no matter what. To get the full effect of that part of the bill, I suggest you visit this web page and click the big yellow button right after you finish reading it.
I think Mark Steyn sums it up rather nicely:
I confess I'm finding it harder and harder to see why you fellows bothered holding a revolution. Under this bill, it will be illegal for me to sell my property to a willing buyer without first bringing it into line with some twerp bureaucrat's arbitrary and ever shifting "environmental" regulations originally designed for California, and which have helped turn the Golden State into the foldin' state, but which are nevertheless now to be applied from Maine to Alaska. And no matter what you spend a couple of years down the road the standards will be "revised" and you'll be out of compliance all over again.
And the very worst thing about all this is that it is only one little bit of what the Democrats in Washington want to do to you. Are you getting a little bit upset yet? If not, here are 49 more things they want to do to you in the name of climate change. I'm sure you can find something in there that might give you a reason to contact your Senator today.
UPDATE: I forgot to mention that I found the nifty linkable form of the bill thanks to this post by Pat who runs the quite good blog And So It Goes in Shreveport. As some of you know, it's very bad mojo not to link to a blogger who provides nifty and/or useful information. Thank you also to those of you who are sending this link around on Twitter. You make a blogger's heart grow three sizes too large this morning!
If this is your first visit to AIP, feel free to leave a comment to say hello (or groan audibly about Henry Waxman's folly of a bill). While you're here, why not take a couple extra minutes to read some of the other good blog posts. The Morning Conservative Reading List is a great place to start (and a reason to visit every day!). From there you can read about Czar Mania, some strange economic polling, and a David Axelrod fact-check beatdown, just for starters.
UPDATE 2: Melissa Clouthier, AIP columnist and blogger extraordinaire, asks an interesting question:
Consider this for a moment. Right now, at this writing, there is a glut of new home supply. Will those homes have to be retrofitted to meet the government's 30% more fuel efficient standards? And how does one magically do this? Already, homes are being built with air-tight windows, special insulation, more efficient air conditioners, etc. What would make it more energy efficient?
I'll give you a hint: think appliances. Trust me, Section 304 is but a miniscule fraction of the mandates the Democrats want to foist upon you
======================================
The previously unreleased Treasury Department analysis, which CBS News reported this week, says the new law would require new taxes between $100 billion to $200 billion a year. That’s how Treasury analysts arrived at the $1,761 per household figure. "Given the administration's proposal to auction all emission allowances, a cap-and-trade program could generate federal receipts on the order of $100 to $200 billion annually," according to the document, which was written by Judson Jaffe, who joined the Treasury Department's Office of Environment and Energy in January. Because personal income tax revenues bring in around $1.37 trillion a year, a $200 billion additional tax would be the equivalent of a 15 percent increase a year. A $100 billion additional tax would represent a 7 percent or 8 percent increase a year. That finding has been echoed by other internal Obama administration documents on the subject. "Economic costs will likely be on the order of 1 percent of GDP, making them equal in scale to all existing environmental regulation," according to a second memorandum that was prepared for Obama's transition team after the November election. CBS reported these figures based on documents that the free-market Competitive Enterprise Institute obtained under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) and released on Tuesday. Other figures developed in studies for a new cap-and-trade law have been even more prohibitive. House Republican Leader John Boehner has estimated that the additional tax bill would be at least $366 billion a year, or $3,100 a year per family. The Heritage Foundation says that, by 2035, "the typical family of four will see its direct energy costs rise by over $1,500 per year." Christopher Horner, a senior fellow at the Competitive Enterprise Institute who filed the FOIA request, told CBS, "Heritage is saying publicly what the administration is saying to itself privately. It's nice to see they're not spinning each other behind closed doors." Democrats pushing such legislation, meanwhile, have relied on estimates from MIT's John Reilly, who put the cost at $800 a year per family. They insist that tax credits to low-income households could offset part of the bite. And responding to release of the document, The Environmental Defense Fund issued a statement insisting that the figures ignore the cost savings to consumers from cap-and-trade legislation. “Even if a 100 percent auction was a live legislative proposal, which it's not, that math ignores the redistribution of revenue back to consumers,” the environmental fund’s statement said. “It only looks at one side of the balance sheet. It would only be true if you think the Administration was going to pile all the cash on the White House lawn and set it on fire.” The Democrats are “not telling you the cost — they're not telling you the benefit," says Horner, who wrote the Politically Incorrect Guide to Global Warming. "If they don't tell you the cost, and they don't tell you the benefit, what are they telling you? They're just talking about global salvation."
Cap-and-Trade's Cost to Americans: $1,761 per Household
Thursday, September 17, 2009 1:07 PM
By: Dan WeilArticle Font Size
