Hillary’s Secret Energy Plans

When she was a U.S. senator, Hillary Clinton was all in for imposing the “cap and trade” energy policy on America.

Had Clinton’s legislation become law, the average American would now be spending $35.63 more per month, or roughly $430 more per year on energy, according to an assessment by the Heritage Foundation.

Recent campaign hires by Clinton suggest she is still intent on raising Americans’ energy costs, said Luke Popovich, vice president of external communications for the National Mining Association.

Had Clinton’s legislation become law, the average American would now be spending $35.63 more per month.

“She now has on her campaign staff, in senior positions, some of the same ideologues that spearheaded Obama’s climate change regulations for power plants that we believe are unlawful, will raise electricity prices, destroy more high-wage jobs and weaken grid reliability,” he said.

“She cannot say she will stand up for blue-collar working people, and at the same time do the bidding of the Sierra Club,” he added. “If politics is choosing, that will be among the bigger choices she must make.”

The Sierra Club, recently bolstered by a $30-million donation from former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, is the nation’s most aggressive environmentalist organization. A Politico report said the organization’s three-year campaign titled “Beyond Coal” has contributed to shuttering 190 of the nation’s 523 coal-fired power plants.

In 2007, Clinton and other Democratic senators sponsored a bill called the Climate Stewardship and Innovation Act. From her position on the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works, she voted for passage of the Lieberman-Warner Climate Security Act. Both bills failed.

The study also estimated Americans would lose roughly 1 million jobs by 2016 and suffer at least $1.7 trillion in lost economic activity.

These policies would have sharply increased American families’ energy costs by an average of roughly $430 more per year, according to a 2007 assessment by the Heritage Foundation. The study also estimated Americans would lose roughly 1 million jobs by 2016 and suffer at least $1.7 trillion in lost economic activity.

As a presidential candidate in 2008, Clinton sought to cut carbon emissions by 80 percent over 42 years. That is very ambitious and very costly.

For example, a 2010 bill that tried to cut carbon output by 80 percent over a similar period would have increased Americans’ energy costs by 90 percent. The estimate was prepared by the Heritage Foundation’s Roe Institute for Economic Policy Studies.

That 90-percent growth would add roughly $105.41 to each household’s monthly energy costs, said the estimate. Even if that estimate is exaggerated by as much as 50 percent, that means an annual increase of $700 per year.

In 2008, Clinton pushed other laws to burden Americans’ wallets when she was running for the White House against a then little-known Illinois politician named Barack Obama.

In 2008, according to Time Magazine, Clinton wanted more cap-and-trade bills, called for a national 10 percent reduction in overall energy use by 2020, and opposed energy exploration and drilling in the Atlantic Ocean and northern Alaska. Clinton also proposed saddling the struggling American automobile industry with new mileage efficiency hikes.

Related: America or Washington?

But even those positions are mild compared with President Obama’s current demands, say industry experts.

For example, a 2015 study published by the National Association of Manufacturers found the ozone standard proposal from Obama’s deputies at the Environmental Protection Agency “would be the most expensive regulation ever imposed on the American public.” The study found the new standards would threaten as many as 1.4 million American jobs and $140 billion in economic activity.

It is not known whether Hillary Clinton would go that far. She has yet to outline her detailed campaign positions on American energy. The impact of those polices, positive or negative, could be massive for the livelihoods of American families.

A request for comment from Clinton’s campaign was not returned.
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