The Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI) has been a consistent voice for classical liberalism in energy and climate for several decades. CEI stays scholarly on the intellectual front (thank Marlo Lewis et al.) and activist on the policy front. The latest from the lean, pound-for-pound, heavy hitting think tank (letter of August 16, 2023) follows:

Dear Members of Congress:

On the first anniversary of enactment of the so-called Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), the undersigned organizations strongly urge you to ensure that the IRA’s Green New Deal-type policies quickly come to an end.

We recognize that in the next year complete repeal of the IRA’s harmful energy and environmental provisions is unlikely. However, clear and tangible legislative changes that make genuine progress towards that goal are realistic and expected.

IRA proponents will today be celebrating the bill’s passage.…

“It seems that the only people who could claim a $14,000 [home electrification] rebate have well above average income.  If so, like $7,500 electric vehicles (EV’s) rebates, this is an incentive that primarily will benefit the already well-to-do; except nearly twice as much as EV’s.”

“Without gas utilities to serve heating demand, electric utilities will become winter peaking, requiring massive investments of generating capacity and/or battery storage.”  

Searchable text of Inflation Reduction Act is here.

The American public has been sold out in energy and climate just when the opposite seemed to be at hand. This bill is about bigger government, more spending, greater deficits, and more monetary inflation (federal counterfeiting) to make it all work (see Concerned Economists letter).

Hidden in the Bill are innumerable special-interest government interventions, one of which is very anti-consumer that no one is talking about.…

“… we agree with the urgent need to reduce inflation, but the ‘Inflation Reduction Act of 2022’ is a misleading label applied to a bill that would likely achieve the exact opposite effect.”

Philosophic fraud is a term to describe purposeful misdirection. It may not be prosecutable, but it is strategic deceit.

I was reminded of this upon reading (and signing) the Concerned Economists letter on the $739 billion Inflation Reduction Act of 2022, which is scheduled for a vote tomorrow (Saturday). It’s all a rush with a bill so huge and laden with so many special interest giveaways.

The letter follows:

Dear Leader Schumer, Leader McConnell, Speaker Pelosi, and Leader McCarthy,

The U.S. economy is at a dangerous crossroads. Forty-year high inflation is causing immense strain for households and small businesses, and it is prompting steep interest rate hikes that, while necessary to counter fiscal policy excesses, increase the chance of a deepening recession.…

“Now, climate warriors have arrayed their forces against manmade ‘chemical’ nitrogen fertilizers. The convenient collateral damage in this campaign is the natural gas required to produce this essential plant nutrient.”

Throughout modern history science-based increases in food production and the wealth it generates have brought astonishing reductions in population growth rates. Then came climate alarmism and forced energy transformation.

The farmers toil as many Americans relax and take summer vacations. The agricultural sector today represents only 1.3 percent of our population compared to 30 percent a century ago, producing record harvests through brains, sweat, and science (and CO2 enrichment and longer growing seasons). Yet many of them feel uneasy about the climate-change exaggerators who have them in the government’s crosshairs.

A New Front

It is not only beef from cattle, a methane issue.…