Does anyone else get the impression that Congress needs to be sent to the corner for a time-out? Our policymakers seem to be willing to look into any issue that makes real media headlines, especially if it involves characters like Roger Clemens and Al Gore. Our federal government busies itself with topics like steroid use in baseball and whether or not football hand signals have been stolen. Then all action comes to a halt when Al Gore pays a visit with his mantra of global warming.

If we lived in a country where food and shelter were birthrights, terrorism was unheard of, crime was nonexistent, health care was a given, jobs were plentiful and gasoline sold for a buck a gallon, such issues as juiced-up sports stars may well have a place on the congressional agenda.

But while the American people suffer under escalating economic stress, Capitol Hill dutifully begins to address the very critical issue of steroids and global warming. Talk about fiddling while Rome burns!

The headlines of all the major news sources tell of encroaching recession in the United States. Energy prices are at an all-time high, gasoline is heading toward $4.00 a gallon in the United States and demand is still increasing. At a time when we need a plan to reduce energy costs, here are two bills that Congress is currently pushing:

S.280: To provide for a program to accelerate the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions in the United States by establishing a market-driven system of greenhouse gas tradeable allowances, to support the deployment of new climate change-related technologies, and to ensure benefits to consumers from the trading in such allowances, and for other purposes.

S.2191: To direct the Administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency to establish a program to decrease emissions of greenhouse gases, and for other purposes.

If these two Senate bills don't fill you with a certain sense of foreboding, then you likely haven't had the opportunity to thumb through the 120-plus pages of each bill. Well placed within their text is advocacy of a "market-driven system,"as S.280 puts it, that is economically ineffective at best and potentially harmful at worst.

We are talking, of course, about carbon-trading programs, or "cap and trade."

S.2191, for example, seeks to reduce total U.S. greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions to 63 percent below their 2005 levels by 2050. Specifically, the bill calls for a cap-and-trade system.

This sounds well and good. Who couldn't applaud a system in which markets get the incentive to clean up their act by buying and selling emissions credits? After all, isn't "let the market take care of itself"part of our capitalistic credo?

The truth, however, casts a different light on cap and trade. In March the National Association of Manufacturers (NAM) and the American Council for Capital Formation (ACCF) unveiled a jointly commissioned study assessing the potential national and state economic impacts resulting from S.2191, authored by Sen. Joseph Lieberman (I-Conn.) and Sen. John Warner (R-Va.).

NAM spokesperson Laura Narvaiz released the findings of the study, which concluded that if S.2191 were passed into law, the result "would have a profound economic impact on U.S. businesses, consumers and governments."Specifically:

• Gross domestic product losses of $151 billion to $210 billion in 2020 and $631 billion to $669 billion per year in 2030.
• Employment losses of 1.2 million to 1.8 million jobs in 2020 and 3 million to 4 million jobs in 2030.
• Household income losses of $739 to $2,927 per year in 2020 and up to $6,700 in 2030.
• Electricity price increases of 28 to 33 percent by 2020 and 101 to 129 percent by 2030.
• Gasoline per-gallon price increases of 20 percent by 2020 and a whopping 77 to 145 percent by 2030.

Off the Kyoto Track

Even if the economy takes a hit from these kinds of emission controls, at least the environment is benefiting, right? Not according to the Little Green Data Book 2007, published by the World Bank. This report, released last May, shows that the carbon dioxide levels of current Kyoto Protocol countries are actually up. In the European Union, for instance, emissions have grown 3 percent. "As a group, rich countries are largely off-track with respect to the Kyoto commitments,"notes the World Bank. The exception is countries where emissions have dropped due to the recession of the 1990s. Are we willing to send our country further into economic stress in the quest to reduce emissions?

Despite such evidence against a cap-and-trade system, policymakers seem to have embraced the idea with the same enthusiasm (deluded as it may be) they displayed for expensive, inefficient ethanol. Just listen to our presidential candidates:

• From one frontrunner: "I support a cap-and-trade system that will require all pollution credits to be auctioned. A 100 percent auction ensures that all polluters pay for every ton of emissions they release, rather than giving these emission rights away to coal and oil companies."
• From another: "I endorse a cap-and-trade program that auctions 100 percent of permits alongside investments to move us on the path towards energy independence."
• And the third: "We and the other nations of the world must get serious about substantially reducing greenhouse gas emissions in the coming years or we will hand off a much-diminished world to our grandchildren. We need a successor to the Kyoto Treaty, a cap-and-trade system that delivers the necessary environmental impact in an economically responsible manner."

Can you guess which candidate said what? Not that it matters; they are the same statement. But if you must know, Barack Obama authored the first statement, Hillary Clinton the second. The third comes from John McCain, during his speech to the Los Angeles World Affairs Council on March 26, 2008.