Will Breathing Soon Be Taxed?

I wish I were only joking.

John Hall, the melodious U.S. Congressman (D, NY-19, Guitar, Orleans), recently supported a bill in the House of Representatives that may one day make every other action of your lungs a taxable event.

It’s funny how these things creep up on you. One minute it’s real estate and sales and income taxes. Next thing you know, an exhale is all it takes.

You see, John Hall considers it his responsibility to you his constituents, and to Mother Earth, to protect us all from carbon dioxide. It seems that carbon dioxide—the substance you exhale, and which plants use to grow—is very bad. Congressman Hall and others believe that if we can reduce the amount of carbon dioxide we send into the atmosphere, the polar ice caps will stop melting, and we’ll be protected from global catastrophe.

The means by which Congressman Hall plans to accomplish this astonishing feat is through a 1,000+ page bill called “Cap and Trade,” passed in June by the House of Representatives, and now under serious consideration by the Senate. Essentially, Cap and Trade will require U.S. businesses to pay a tax if they send too much carbon dioxide into the air. “Too much” is a term that will be defined by the folks down in Washington. But if you’re willing to plow through the 1,000+ pages of the Cap and Trade (Waxman- Markey) legislation, you can perhaps begin to get an idea of what “too much” will one day mean.

For starters, Cap and Trade will add tremendous additional costs to most businesses here in the U.S. Those costs, of course, will be passed on to you. The costs will be seen in higher prices or fewer jobs, as companies cut back to meet the added burden of paying their “carbon tax.” Or, jobs will simply be moved to China or India, where factories spew carbon dioxide into the atmosphere without a peep from the tax man.

In any event, here’s all you really need to know about Cap and Trade: the cost of the legislation for a family of

four, according to a secret Obama Treasury Department memo that recently came to light, is estimated at around $1,700 per year. For every family of four.

The liberal Web site Media Matters protested loudly when that memo was uncovered; they said $1,700 a year is way off because at the beginning of the program, the annual cost will be very low. Companies will be “given” carbon credits to get started—at no cost. I laughed out loud when I read that, being reminded that any savvy drug dealer never sells you the first taste, but always “gives” it to you.

And Congressman Hall would certainly scoff at the suggestion that this legislation will ever apply to your breathing. But I think any commonsense person would agree that there’s something very troubling about a law that regulates the substance you exhale.

After all, what’s to stop the government once they start down this road?

Tax the local bagel shop? Tax the dry cleaners? Tax your car? Tax your furnace? Tax your dog? All of them put carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. And ultimately all those taxes will come out of your pocket.

When Ayn Rand wrote her landmark novel Atlas Shrugged in 1957, which embodied her personal and political philosophy, she clearly understood the way a government gathers power. Before immigrating to the United States, Rand had witnessed first-hand the Russian revolution of 1917, and the subsequent rise of communism. As the communist government consolidated power, she observed that one of the ways a state enslaves a population is by passing laws that people can’t help but violate.

Yes; you heard that right. The government passes laws that people can’t help but violate.

“Did you really think we want those laws observed?” one of the government bureaucrats says in Atlas Shrugged. “We want them to be broken . . . One declares so many things to be a crime that it becomes impossible for men to live without breaking laws.”

And there’s the real secret about Cap and Trade—the secret Congressman Hall hopes you never discover. The goal of such laws has very little to do with either carbon dioxide or global warming. Like all regulatory legislation, the real goal of Cap and Trade is simply greater control over you, your property, and your money.

“Who wants a nation of law-abiding citizens?” the bureaucrat asks. “What’s there in that for anyone? But just pass the kind of laws that can neither be observed nor enforced or objectively interpreted—and you create a nation of law-breakers—and then you cash in on guilt.”

Ah, yes. There it is. If everyone’s

guilty, then everyone must pay.

Speaking of paying, Congressman Hall is waiting right over there if you want to go ahead and write that check for $1,700.

Now, now. No whining. He’s just saving the planet, don’t you see.

You’re not against that, are you?

Clint Sherwood is a long-time resident of Lake Peekskill, and for ten years has been a technology writer and editor. He blogs at clintsherwood.blogspot. com.