There is much in the House cap-and-trade energy bill that just passed that I absolutely hate. It is too weak in key areas and way too complicated in others. A simple, straightforward carbon tax would have made much more sense than this Rube Goldberg contraption. It is pathetic that we couldn’t do better. It is appalling that so much had to be given away to polluters. It stinks. It’s a mess. I detest it.After this very accurate characterization of the legislation, what conclusion does Friedman arrive at?
Now let’s get it passed in the Senate and make it law.In short, it is a pathetic, appalling stinker of a bill that he detests, but wants to see in law. Friedman's argument must be that bad legislation can get better over time.
So here is an empirical question that I'd love to get your views on: can you provide an example of complex legislation that was roundly criticized by its strongest supporters that became law and was improved -- either before initial passage or after becoming law -- in such a way that it eventually achieved policy goals?
I'll open the discussion with a case that makes the opposite point. The Gramm-Rudman-Hollings legislation in the 1980s sought to balance budgets. It focused on setting a spending cap with plenty of means to avoid that cap (sound familiar?). Predictably, it failed and was widely perceived as a failure. Because of how it was designed it did not and could not work. It was not improved but supplanted by the Budget Enforcement Act of 1990, which set the stage for the on budget surpluses of the late 1990s (aided of course by favorable economic winds). The case of US budgeting provides a great precedent through which to understand cap and trade. It suggests to me that bad legislation does not get better, it gets replaced. But I am willing to be educated with counter examples.
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The motivation behind Friedman's widely held position is that once you get the nose of the regulatory camel in the tent, the body can come later. They are just following the Kyoto model. Remember Kyoto I? After the stink of GWB's rejection of Kyoto, it came out in the media that all the insiders knew that even if all countries had followed their commitments to the letter, there would have been no effective change in atmospheric carbon levels. Kyoto I was never intended to "do" anything about CO2 levels - it was only intended to put regulatory authority into law in the Western world. From there, the Bureaucratic-Environmentalist Complex could easily turn the ratchet as far as they liked.
In their minds, the details of Waxman-Markey don't matter, and you are missing the point. For the advocates, this is their foundation. If necessary, they'll tear it down and build on the rubble, but first they need the foundation in the law books. A carbon tax would show their hands too early, and would get them slapped down for a generation. They prefer a slow accretion of bureaucratic fiddles.
Whether or not one can find some examples of bad legislation getting improved (and I expect somebody who is a historian of law could probably find at least a few examples) is only marginally relevant, since this issue is fairly unique.
Just as relevant, if not more so, is this question: would/will failure of Waxman-Markey quickly cause a new effort to pass significantly better legislation, or would it have opponents of all such law cheering their success, with the overall effort dead for quite some years? We've waited well over a decade since the failure of the last effort at health care reform, and that also was a pretty bad bill to many advocates of reform. Would the next climate effort be that much sooner?
Everybody on all sides of the cap-n-trade vs carbon tax debate seems to think that they know exactly what this bill will and won't do, and exactly what will or won't happen if it dies. I think that climate models are a lot more reliable than political prognostications. I'm not a fan of this bill, but I am convinced that it is probably the only game in town for some time to come. So I can only _hope_ that whatever the history of improving on bad law, it does get improved, if it passes. And that's still a big if.
"I think that climate models are a lot more reliable than political prognostications"
On what basis? Have multi-decade climate projections been tested and verified? Have the faced and passed the fundamental scientific test against falsification? I'll help you out - the answers are no and no.
The difference between the people who wrote the financial risk models that just imploded the country's banking/investment system and the people who wrote the global climate models you have so much faith in? The people who wrote the risk models were paid more. Much more. Who do you think is "smarter"?
When I was writing about WM the afternoon of the vote, I interviewed three New Mexico players in the energy-climate debate. All three agreed that there was much to dislike about the bill, and all suggested there was a good chance it could be improved in the Senate. I probably need not point out what follows - that all three had very different ideas about what might count as "improved".
The United States Constitution was criticized as deficient by some of the Framers, and was improved by the adoption of the Bill of Rights.
Jack--
I think the US Constitution was good to begin with and then improved by addition of The Bill of Rights. Everyone says Waxman-Markey is bad.
It seems to me that people like Friedman are simply thinking "a bad law is better than no law." I wonder what empirical evidence they have to support that.. my example would be Prohibition. Did it have the desired effect? Did a bad law turn out to be a good thing? Or did it create a disregard for the rule of law and provide an opportunity for corruption? Do we need an economic stimulus package for a Climate Mafia? What is so wrong with a carbon tax? Why have we thrown in the towel on a possibly good law, to promote the admittedly bad?
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