Judd Gregg (R-NH), Barack Obama’s erstwhile Commerce Secretary designate, is also the Senate Budget committee’s ranking member, and has taken to the pages of the Washington Post to criticize his former almost-boss for authoring what his headline calls “a budget to beggar us”.
Gregg writes, “all American families will get stuck with a new ‘light-switch tax’ on electricity bills that is in the president’s budget.” The Post seems to be doubling down on its policy of letting op-ed writers lie in its pages. There is, of course, no such tax in the president’s proposal or the budget resolution, and nor could there be. Obama’s proposal contemplates revenue from a cap-and-trade bill, and there is a deficit neutral reserve fund for future climate change legislation in the resolution, but even that section was amended last night to provide that any increased energy costs would be offset by cap-and-trade revenue.
This is all a bit curious from Gregg who purports to have “repeatedly voted in support of mandatory reductions in greenhouse gas emissions,” but I guess hell hath no fury like a would-be Commerce Secretary scorned.
