Universal Trust Fund in the Kerry-Lieberman climate bill

[Mike Sandler]

Hi FEASTA folks,
The US Cap & Dividend supporters are cynical about the Kerry-Lieberman (K-L) climate bill. My blog on Huffington Post describes K-L as victimized by the same "stall, waterdown, and ditch" strategy that the U.S. used on the Kyoto Protocol.

The CLEAR Act has the support of Cap & Dividend supporters, but is still considered a runner-up to K-L, even though CLEAR has a Republican co-sponsor (Susan Collins of Maine), and K-L's Republican sponsor has ditched them.

Anyway, I thought you might be interested to see that buried in K-L's 987 pages is the "Establishment of universal fund":
 Beginning in 2026, revenue is placed in the universal fund to be returned to consumers
 75% goes to consumers, 25% used for deficit reduction
 Money returned to consumers through the tax code, goes back once a year
 Amount of return based on household size

It was obviously put in there to try to get votes from the CLEAR Act's co-sponsors, but it's pretty weak.
Looking ahead, the first vote on climate in the U.S. Senate on June 10th or so will be to actually take away the EPA's authority to do anything about climate change. So, that's fairly reminiscent of the Bush-era. It looks like there are maybe 40 votes on each side, and it needs 51 votes to pass. Even if it passes, the House would not pass it, and Obama would veto it anyway, so it's mostly symbolic, but it might affect the Senate's willingness to make other climate votes this summer. Assuming revoking EPA authority fails, then there may be some more Senate activity in mid-June.

Meanwhile, the ongoing destruction of the Gulf of Mexico may cause a brief stirring in the American public consciousness that human activity actually does impact ecosystems. We'll see if that causes our broken political system to attempt to take some sort of meaningful action.

Your American correspondent,

-Mike S.
www.carbonshare.org