I recently uncovered a series of troubling e-mails using Wisconsin's Open Records Law showing Governor Jim Doyle's Administration used taxpayer money to fly in a radical "environmental rights advocate" from California to promote a job-killing, tax-raising global warming bill.  A bill that is so extreme, that most Democrats are refusing to back it now.

It is outrageous that an environmental extremist was flown to Wisconsin, paid for by the taxpayers, to specifically refute General Motor’s effort to educate lawmakers and the public about the impact a “global warming bill” would have on our state’s manufacturing-dependent economy. This all took place before GM made the decision to shut down major Wisconsin operations.

On Tuesday afternoon, the co-chairs of the Assembly Special Committee on Clean Energy Jobs released a 150-page rewrite of Governor Doyle’s Global Warming Bill...to the media.  I and the other Republican committee members, Reps. Phil Montgomery (R-Ashwaubenon) and Scott Gunderson (R-Waterford), were forced to retrieve the amendment from the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel website in order to read it.  On Wednesday, we learned that the committee would forgo a public hearing and take a vote the following day.  The bill was approved on a party-line vote of 6 to 3, with all three Republicans voting "no."

Wisconsin state government wants to help you save money on you energy bill.  All you need to do is pay the $700 million annual tab for state energy efficiency programs for the next 15 years.  Today, electric customers are taxed $90 million each year to fund rebates for EnergyStar appliances and high efficiency furnaces, cash-back rewards for small businesses that undertake energy efficiency projects and rebates and cash incentives for process improvements at manufacturing plants.  An 800% increase in this energy efficiency tax on electric bills gives new meaning to the notion that you have to spend money to save money.  If it becomes law, electric customers will spend at least $10.5 billion over the next 15 years.

What is a Green Job Anyway?

Yesterday, lawmakers received a memo from 41 of Wisconsin’s business and community organizations outlining their opposition to Governor Doyle’s Global Warming Bill.  Manufacturers, convenience store and restaurant owners, retailers and representatives of the agriculture, construction, transportation and housing industries united in an attempt to prevent the enormous costs and devastating economic impacts of the proposal.  They were joined by chambers of commerce from Eau Claire, Fond du Lac, Janesville, Fox Cities, Green Bay, Kaukauna, La Crosse, Marshfield, Menomonee, Milwaukee, Oshkosh, Racine, Wausau and West Bend.

Once the Assembly Special Committee on Green Energy Jobs wrapped up its two public hearings on Governor Doyle’s Global Warming bill, the co-chairs conceded that some rewrites were necessary.  Yet, both co-chair Jim Soletski (D-Green Bay) and the governor have said they want to preserve the requirement that 25% of the electricity used in Wisconsin must come from renewable sources by 2025.  Based on Public Service Commission of Wisconsin (PSC) data, it will cost electric customers more than $15 billion to make that happen.  And, according to the Governor’s Global Warming Task Force, it Read more