HOUSE Republican Leader John Boehner

Washington, Jun 25 - House Republican Leader John Boehner (R-OH) today released a new chart underscoring the bureaucratic nightmare that is Speaker Pelosi’s national energy tax.  The chart highlights the slew of new government programs Democrats will create in order to take and redistribute trillions of dollars from family budgets and workers payrolls in the form of allowances – all overseen by a confusing web of government agencies. 

Make sense?  Not really.  In fact, in a news conference earlier today, Boehner called it “ridiculous”:

The depiction of how Speaker Pelosi’s national energy tax will work is bad enough.  But its consequences for families and small businesses across the country are even worse.  The tax – which may come up for a House vote tomorrow – will be forced upon anyone who drives a car, buys an American-made product, or flips on a light switch.  As a result, it will drive up energy costs, send millions of jobs to countries like China and India who do not have national energy taxes of their own, and place an especially heavy burden on rural America.  Democratic leaders have been scrambling to round up votes for the legislation, and they initially called in former Vice President Gore to help.  But at the last minute, they told him to stay home, realizing that rural Democrats who are already in a difficult situation because of this painful vote would rather not be associated with the former Vice President and other left-swing special interests.  Boehner highlighted the on-again, off-again invitation for the Vice President to rally support for Speaker Pelosi’s national energy tax:

Democratic leaders are poised to march many moderate Democrats over a cliff tomorrow by forcing them to vote for a national energy tax that is unpopular throughout the heartland – and just as Members head home for the July Fourth recess, no less.  At the same time, they’ll be marching middle-class families and small businesses off a cliff as well – asking them to pay more than ever for energy at a time when they can afford it least and risking devastating job loss with unemployment already soaring.  This will be a decisive vote in the 111th Congress, and the American people will not forget it.  Are moderate Democrats ready to support this costly, jobs-killing bureaucratic nightmare?