Debunking the $3,100

Rep. Paul Broun, in addition to just flat-out denying the human factor in global warming, has been peddling inaccurate statistics and trying to present them as fact.

I had previously pointed out how Broun's argument was factually flawed - in addition to how it was deliberately constructed to be misleading for his constituents - and earlier today, John Reilly, one of the authors of the M.I.T. study that is being misused by House Republicans to push forward the incorrect '$3,100 per household increase' meme being trotted around, emailed me with some additional thoughts.

Reilly has been vocal in his frustrations with the misrepresentation of his study, conducted in 2007, and he even approached the House Republican leadership to inform them they were inappropriately intepreting his findings.

His response to me ...

I am surprised (the $3,100 number) is still being used. It is somewhat peculiar that they cite our study as an authoritative source for this information yet do not accept clarifications by the authors as authoritative. I'm not sure what the CBO has done. I know people who work there who are good analysts but I believe they are faced with some specific rules in terms of how they score legislation.

The main difference appears to be that they would like to interpret any auction revenue as a tax and a cost. But even using this definition it is not clear to me that allowances are being auctioned in that manner, and so the interpretation even if you were to accept that view seems wrong.

Government revenue from an auction does end up back in people's pockets one way or another, and the current legislation goes to considerable length to make sure that the value of allowances will be distributed to middle and lower income people and to offset the increased costs to energy consumers. Thus, I think it is highly misleading to portray the full value of the permits allocated as a "cost."

We hope to conduct new analysis of the legislation that evaluates costs to households of different income levels and of different regions of the country, including consideration of the various mechanism for allocation the allowances and revenue from them, and thus provide a better picture of impacts on households that find themselves in different circumstances.