Lies, damn lies and the American Power Act

The American Power Act (aka KGL or "Keggles") is scheduled to be released on April 26. Senators John Kerry, Joe Lieberman and Lindsey Graham have been working on it for some months now. The exact provisions of the bill will be revealed on that date, but that hasn't stopped the speculation from the media and early hints from the legislators, especially Kerry and Graham. In March, the three released an eight-page draft of the bill, which included language on a cap-and-trade scheme for utilities/manufacturing and a fuel carbon fee.

Of course, the inclusion of a cap-and-trade program didn't stop Lindsey Graham from pronouncing cap-and-trade "dead." Nor did the fuel carbon fee stop John Kerry from acting like there was never any talk of a gas tax. It's a pretty fascinating political strategy: write a law putting these carbon reduction programs into effect, and then deny everything when asked about it. Maybe the Democrats could have passed a single payer system for health insurance if they had simply called it the "Maintaining the Health Care Status Quo Act." Or maybe this strategy of misdirection (read: lies) will backfire, compelling the Senators to defend their bill against accusations of dishonesty and trickery.