Inhofe stops in Stigler

By Bob Rosenburgh, Staff Writer

STIGLER, Sept. 3 — Sen. James M. Inhofe is predicting an American revolution next year the likes of which hasn’t been seen since 1776.

“It will be like 1994 all over again,” he told a group of Stigler residents during a surprise visit to the Farm Bureau office on Friday, “only this time it will be much, much bigger as voters react to the excesses of the Obama administration.” Inhofe first took his own senate seat that same year when the so-called “Contract with America,” authored by then-Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich, ushered in a Republican revolution that won GOP majorities in both houses.

“Back then,” Inhofe explained, “people reacted sharply to Bill Clinton’s over-reaching policies, like tearing down the military, Hillary-care and the policies of the Carol Browner EPA. But all that was nothing compared to what is going on in Washington now.”

He went over the issues one by one.

“We have this thing called Cap-and-Trade and it’s the largest tax increase in the history of America.” Few people outside the Beltway have heard of the bill, which recently cleared the House by a thin 219-212 margin. If it passes in the Senate, its effects could be monumental. “It doesn’t accomplish anything,” Inhofe said, “but it’s something the far-left environmentalists want to force us to pay for.”

Cap-and-trade has been touted by its creators as a way to reduce carbon emissions by levying a charge on all uses of any kind of carbon-based energy through a series “carbon credits,” which are, in fact, a tax on them all.

Jeffrey D. Sachs, who is one of Cap-and-Trade’s promoters as well as director of the Earth Institute at Columbia University, wrote in the September issue of Scientific American magazine, “Putting a price on carbon is the most important policy (in the bill) because that will indeed send a signal through the economy to shift to low-carbon technologies.” In short, make gasoline, natural gas and coal so expensive that it hurts.

“It’s just a $300 billion a year tax on everyone who drives a car or flips on a light switch,” said Inhofe, who plans to block Cap-and-Trade however he can. “The idea that man-made gasses like carbon dioxide are causing global warming is the greatest hoax ever perpetrated on the American people,” he said. “They just want to stop all progress and farmers will bear the pain under this bill.”

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