From Politico:

Senate authors of a controversial climate change bill heralded EPA modeling results unveiled Tuesday as proof that their plan would have a limited pinch on Americans’ pocketbooks.

Sens. John Kerry (D-Mass.) and Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.) found many reasons to gloat after getting the 74-page study that showed the overall costs from their legislation’s major global warming provisions would cost an average household between $80 to $150 per year.

“There’ll be some people who will want to demagogue that politically, but that’s less than $1 a day,” Lieberman told reporters. “Is the American household willing to pay less than $1 so we don’t have to buy oil from foreign countries, so we can create millions of new jobs, so we can clean up our environment? I think the answer is going to be yes.”

We knew that this type of bill would rear its ugly head again.  A few points to consider:  First, models are imperfect tools.  They are decision-support tools and are frequently quite wrong (see mortgage securitization, for example).  So the estimates touted by the senators could be very low.  Second, $80 to $150 per year is a lot of money for some households.  It’s a month worth of groceries or the “activity fee” required by some public schools so your child can play athletics or participate in the band.  For some,  it eats into a rent or mortgage payment.  Think about the people who need to work two jobs to make ends meet.  Over the course of a year, $1 a day is a lot of money to them.  Third, this is simply an example of elitism at its finest.  The reality is that most Americans care about the economy.  A conjured problem like climate change, based on fraudulent since, is not high on their list of priorities or concerns–nor should it be.