Tim Geithner: Tax Cheat & Climate Expert

Is Tim Geithner Secretary of the Treasury or the Environmental Protection Agency?

His testimony in the past two days before Congress would seem to leave the question in some doubt. For instance, yesterday:

... the Treasury secretary acknowledged that consumers could face higher electric bills because Obama would impose fees on greenhouse gas producers, including power plants that burn fossil fuels, by auctioning off carbon pollution permits. The goal is to reduce the emissions blamed for global warming while raising a projected $646 billion over 10 years.

"Now, if people don't change how they use energy, then they will face higher costs for energy," Geithner said.

Did you get that last bit? If we do not change how we use energy, we are going to face higher energy costs. I don't know about your place, but at Casa Oklahomily we've trimmed our heating and cooling costs big time, and there just isn't a whole lot more we could do unless we move to a cave somewhere. I resent like hell this tax cheat lecturing the representatives of the American people on our wasteful tendencies and insinuating that we deserve to pay higher energy bills because of this mad cap and trade tax scheme.

But Geithner was just getting warmed up.

WASHINGTON, March 4 (Reuters) - U.S. oil and natural gas producing companies should not receive federal subsidies in the form of tax breaks because their businesses contribute to global warming, U.S. Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner told Congress on Wednesday.

It was one of the sharpest attacks yet on the oil and gas industry by a top Obama administration official, reinforcing the White House stance that new U.S. energy policy will focus on promoting renewable energy sources like wind and solar power and rely less on traditional fossil fuels like oil as America tackles climate change.

Great. Attack the people who provide the energy that powers our economy, our cars, our standard of living, on the basis of an unproven theory of man-made climate change, especially now in the face of new evidence that global warming seems to have stalled out.

Just more evidence that Tim Geithner was chosen as much for his willingness to carry the water for his Obamamasters as he is for any real expertise in crafting economic policy. It also gives witness to the lie that this administration wants to get off foreign oil.

This is about taxes and power. Pure and simple.