Letter I sent to my two Maine Senators

Dear Senators Collins and Snowe,
First I would like to thank you for being such great Senators. You are fair, thoughtful and look out for the best interests of the American people and the people from the great August 6, 2009 State of Maine. I am very proud to be represented by the both of you.
Please give the Presidents health care bill a fair hearing. I'm on Medicare and am satisfied, of coarse I wish it was less expensive, but heck, I would be dead now if it were not for Medicare, so I'm not complaining. The Republican plan is great for the rich, but my wife has no insurance because she went from full time to one day a week. We can't even buy COBRA because she still works for the same employer. That's a hole that a lot of people must fall into, it's pretty deep.
This Cap and Trade stuff is not new. I'm sure you remember Reagan's first attempt at controlling acid rain and that a bill finally got passed under Bush I The Clean Air Act. The bill was a big success and the emissions are still traded.
An early example of an emission trading system has been the SO2 (sulfur dioxide) trading system under the framework of the Acid Rain Program of the 1990 Clean Air Act in the U.S. Under the program, which is essentially a cap-and-trade emissions trading system, SO2 emissions were reduced by 50 percent from 1980 levels by 2007.[50] Some experts argue that the "cap and trade" system of SO2 emissions reduction has reduced the cost of controlling acid rain by as much as 80 percent versus source-by-source reduction.[51][52]

In 1997, the State of Illinois adopted a trading program for volatile organic compounds in most of the Chicago area, called the Emissions Reduction Market System.[53] Beginning in 2000, over 100 major sources of pollution in eight Illinois counties began trading pollution credits.

In 2003, New York State proposed and attained commitments from nine Northeast states to form a cap and trade carbon dioxide emissions program for power generators, called the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI). This program launched on January 1, 2009 with the aim to reduce the carbon "budget" of each state's electricity generation sector to 10 percent below their 2009 allowances by 2018.[54]

Also in 2003, U.S. corporations were able to trade CO2 emission allowances on the Chicago Climate Exchange under a voluntary scheme. In August 2007, the Exchange announced a mechanism to create emission offsets for projects within the United States that cleanly destroy ozone-depleting substances.[55]

In 2007, the California Legislature passed the California Global Warming Solutions Act, AB-32, which was signed into law by Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger. Thus far, flexible mechanisms in the form of project based offsets have been suggested for five main project types. A carbon project would create offsets by showing that it has reduced carbon dioxide and equivalent gases. The project types include: manure management, forestry, building energy, SF6, and landfill gas capture.

Since February 2007, seven U.S. states and four Canadian provinces have joined together to create the Western Climate Initiative, a regional greenhouse gas emissions trading system.[56]

On November 17, 2008 President-elect Barack Obama clarified, in a talk recorded for YouTube, that the US will enter a cap and trade system to limit global warming.[57]

The 2010 United States federal budget proposes to support clean energy development with a 10-year investment of US $15 billion per year, generated from the sale of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions credits. Under the proposed cap-and-trade program, all GHG emissions credits would be auctioned off, generating an estimated $78.7 billion in additional revenue in FY 2012, steadily increasing to $83 billion by FY 2019.[58].(Wikipedia)
This sounds like a program that both parties ought to vote for.
Thank you for your time.
If I can help you in analyzing an economic problem, I'd be glad to help. I have a big advantage over most analysts because I'm not an economist.
Sincerely yours,
Bob Bregman
York, ME

Just trying to help things along.

The Old Philosopher