A
License Required for your house
Thinking
about selling your house - A
look at H.R. 2454 (Cap and trade
bill) a/k/a Carbon Tax Bill.
This is horrendous!
It's
only the beginning from the
Obama administration!
Home owners take note & forward
to your friends and
relatives who are home owners!
Beginning 1 year after enactment
of the Cap and Trade Act, you won't
be able to sell your home unless
you retrofit
it to comply with the energy and
water efficiency standards of
this Act. H.R. 2454, the
"Cap & Trade" bill
passed by the House of
Representatives, if also
passed by the Senate, will be
the largest tax increase any of
us has ever experienced!
The Congressional Budget Office
(supposedly
non-partisan) estimates that in
just a few years the
average cost to every family of
four will be $6,800 per year! No
one is excluded!
However, once the lower classes
feel the pinch in their wallets,
you can be sure these voters get
a tax refund (even if they pay
no taxes at all) to offset this
new cost. Thus, you
Mr. and Mrs. Middle Class
America will
have to pay even more since
additional tax dollars will be
needed to bail out everyone
else!
But wait. This
awful bill (that no one in
Congress has actually read) has
many more surprises in it.
Probably the worst one is this: A
year from now you won't
be able to sell your house.
Yes, you read that right. The
caveat is (there always is a
caveat) that if
you have enough money to make required
major upgrades to your home,
then you can sell it. But, if
not, then forget it!
Even pre-fabricated homes
("mobile homes") are
included!
In
effect, this
bill prevents you from selling
your home without the permission
of the EPA administrator!
To
get this permission, you will
have to have the energy
efficiency of your home
measured.
Then the
government
will tell you what your new
energy efficiency requirement is
and you will be forced to make
modifications to your home under
the retrofit provisions of this
Act to comply with the new
energy and water efficiency
requirements.
Then you
will have to get your home
measured again and get a license
(called a "label" in
the Act) that must be posted on
your property to show what your
efficiency rating is;
sort of like the Energy Star
efficiency rating label on your
refrigerator or air conditioner.
If
you don't get a high enough
rating, you can't sell!
And, the
EPA administrator is authorized
to raise the standards
every year, even above the
automatic energy efficiency
increases built into the Act!
The EPA administrator, appointed
by the President, will run the
Cap & Trade program (AKA the
"American Clean Energy and
Security Act of 2009") and is
authorized to make any future
changes to the regulations and
standards he alone determines to
be in the government's best
interest!
What
happened to We The People?Requirements
are set low initially so the
bill will pass Congress;
then the Administrator can
set much tougher new standards
every year. The Act itself
contains annual required
increases in energy
efficiency for private and
commercial residences and
buildings.
However, the
EPA administrator can set higher
standards at any time.
Sect. 202 Building Retrofit
Program mandates
a national retrofit program to
increase the energy efficiency
of all existing homes across
America . Beginning 1 year after
enactment of the Act, you
won't be able to sell your home
unless you retrofit it to comply
with the energy and water
efficiency standards of this Act.
You had better sell soon,
because the
standards will be raised each
year and will be really hard
(i.e., expensive) to meet in a
few years.
Oh, goody! The Act allows the
government to give you a grant
of several thousand dollars to
comply with the retrofit program
requirements if you meet certain
energy efficiency levels. But,
wait, the
State can set additional
requirements on who qualifies to
receive the grants!
You should expect requirements
such as "can't have an
income of more than $50K per
year", "home selling
price can't be more than
$125K", or anything else to
target the upper middle class
(and that's YOU) and prevent
them from qualifying for the
grants. Most
of us won't get a dime and will
have to pay the entire cost of
the retrofit out of our own
pockets.
More
transfer of wealth, more
"change you can believe
in!"
Sect. 204 Building Energy
Performance Labeling Program
establishes a labeling program
that for each individual
residence will identify the
achieved energy efficiency
performance for "at least
90 percent of the residential
market within 5 years after the
date of the enactment of this
Act." This means that
within 5 years 90% of all
residential homes in the U.S.
must be measured and labeled. The
EPA administrator will get $50Million
each year just to enforce
the labeling program.
The
Secretary of the Department of
Energy will get an additional $20Million
each year to help enforce
the labeling program.
Some
of this money will, of course,
be spent on coming up with
tougher standards each year.
Oh, the label will be like a
license for your car. You
will be required to post
the label in a conspicuous
location in your home and will
not be allowed to sell your home
without having this label!
And, just like your car license,
you
will be required to get a
new label
every so often - maybe every
year. The government
estimates the cost of measuring
the energy efficiency of your
home should
only
cost
about $200 each time.
Remember what they said about
the auto smog inspections when
they first started: that in
California it would only
cost $15.
That was when the program
started. Now
the cost is about $50
for the inspection and
certificate; a
333% increase!
Expect the same from the home
labeling program.
Sect.
304 Greater Energy Efficiency in
Building Codes establishes new
energy efficiency guidelines for
the National Building Code and mandates
304(d) that 1 year after
enactment of this Act, all state
and local jurisdictions must
adopt the National Building Code
energy efficiency provisions
or
must obtain a certification from
the federal government that
their state and/or local codes
have been brought into full
compliance with the National
Building Code energy efficiency
standards.
