We give up on socialized health care to go with a public health insurer option plan. They attack the public health insurer option and claim it's socialized health care.

We give up the carbon tax to go with cap and trade. They attack the cap and trade plan and claim it's a carbon tax.

Personally, although I like Obama's cap+trade+auctions system on its own merits, I don't see what would be so bad about an actual carbon-based energy tax. Chris Dodd specifically wanted such a thing.

How about a little semantic Judo? Take any GOP legislation, including amendments, and just call it something like "the ignorance tax" or "the stupidity tax."

Use "Limbaugh" as an adjective, as in "This is just Limbaugh Legislation."

Call other amendments and bills "Legislation to nowhere, like the GOP bridge in Alaska ..."

Thought the only solutions the GOP had was to tax middle americans and spend for the corporations! which put money in both their pockets!..That is all they did for the last 14 of 16 years while they were in charge of Congress!

As to their spewing ---WHO IS LISTENING__THEIR RATINGS ARE DROPPING LIKE A STONE!

Hey, why stop there? It's a tax on dead dinosaurs! It's Death Tax II!

Perhaps we should re-brand the Republicans. Any (FCC-compliant) suggestions?

How about "Republicants"

(I especially like this for the near-homophone with the Blade Runner robots)

I don't understand why more Democrats don't attack this kind of Republican "free market" nonsense from a reality-based market perspective and point out that "pro-business" Republican policies actually result in a corruption of the market, most frequently in terms of a reduction in competition.

In this case cap and trade is one way of simply internalizing into the transaction costs that used to be considered externalities of energy markets. But now we know those “externalities” were just delayed costs that energy producers are shoving off onto taxpayers while degrading the environment and our future at the same time.

Having real functioning energy markets with all environmental costs accounted for is going to be vital in the future so we can use markets to squeeze every possible efficiency out of what energy resources we have. That has less to do with economic growth and capitalism and more to do with feeding the hungry and housing the homeless.

It is simply a lie to call this an "energy" tax because it will not "tax" clean energies such as wind and solar, or even nuclear. In fact, these industries will likely receive tax credits!

I remember when the GOP attached their partisan policies to budget proposals because they were too unpopular to get passed the legitimate way. Seeing the Democrats do the same thing is disheartening. Aren't we supposed to be better than this?

Also, as much as I hate to admit it, the Republicans do seem to have a point. The energy companies getting hit by the cap and trade system are not as fond of their consumers as they are of their profits. They'll just increase prices for consumers. What are we gonna do? Stop using energy? We are still mostly producing energy using fossil fuels (I include nuclear energy here because it takes a lot of petroleum to fuel the mining and enrichment process), so they pretty much have us by the balls.

I think this may be a pick-your-battles kind of thing. It is unlikely that emissions will stop accelerating until we move off of oil. Kyoto's impact is regarded by most climate scientists as negligible, and it's hard enough to get the US population to accept even that much sacrifice.

Regulating the existing energy production system will be unpopular, costly, and ineffective. Obama may have won by a landslide and the Republicans may be nearly irrelevant, but the Democratic white house and congress aren't so secure that they can afford to screw things like this up.

If they pass this legislation, they better make damn sure that the energy companies can't just pass the costs on to the consumers or lay off their workers. Exxon Mobil and others can absorb these costs, the most important part of this bill is making sure they do.

People are having a hard enough time as it is, and significant increases in their bills will be felt 12 times as often as any tax cut, no matter which amount is greater by year's end.

Republicans are able to survive and get elected because they know how to manipulate those who only take things at face value. If you give them more opportunities to say "see how bad things are now that Obama's in office?", you'll be seeing a Republican president again sooner than you think.

Personally, I have no problem with higher energy prices, if the cause of the hikes is higher "taxes" that can be used for alternative energy research. The ONLY way to reduce the consumption of fossil fuels in this country is to make it too expensive. The American people are too numb to any other form of persuasion. When gas prices reached $4 a gallon last summer, we saw a reduction in consumption and the oil giants got scared and prices went down, leading to a return to high consumption.

Put in place a high tax, cap and trade, whatever you want to to call it. Drive prices up at the pump and people will start to conserve. It's the only way to do it.