I recently wrote both Representative Baldwin and Senator Feingold on the Cap and Trade bill before Congress now.  While I’m not necessarily thrilled with either’s response, there were notable differences between the two.  At least Senator Feingold made a stand on not using reconciliation when considering this legislation.  Reconciliation is a fast track procedure intended for budget legislation and would be a stretch to use in this scenario.  It is appealing to Democrat-majority though since it short-circuits the normal procedures (including the possibility of a filibuster) for debating legislation.  I don’t see eye to eye with him on many issues but I’ll give him credit where credit is due.

Representative’s Baldwin’s response though contained no highlights whatsoever and was text-book propaganda for climate-change alarmists.  It bothers me that on such an important issue all I get is stock platitudes from my elected representative when I take the time to write her.  My favorite part was her claim that this legislation would “create 37,000 new jobs in Wisconsin, alone”.  No mention of how many jobs it will destroy or how much it will really cost the average family in Wisconsin though.  I hate to consistently use this phrase but it seems she must consider us too stupid to completely understand this issue and we’ll accept these statistics as facts from her without further thought. 

Coincidently I was driving through West Virginia recently and they’re not convinced Cap and Trade is not a good thing for their coal industry either.  As one caller I heard said: “If they pass Cap and Trade in the Senate, they can just put ‘West Virginia is Closed’ on all our road signs”.  I wonder if their representative would write them a nice letter to tell them how many jobs will be created by this bill?