With all the Michael Jackson hoopla over the last few days, few people saw that the administration's cap and trade plans have passed the House and moved on to the Senate.
Besides being disasterous in its own right, the bill has a nice little provision that will make sure the housing market doesn't recover too quickly. The bill plans to implement federal standards for a home's green rating. If your home doesn't meet that standards set then you may not be able to sell it, and will have to pay to get it up to standards.
The 1,400-page cap-and-trade legislation pushed through by House Democrats contains a new federal policy that residential, commercial, and government buildings be retrofitted to increase energy efficiency, leaving it up to the states to figure out exactly how to do that.
This means that homeowners, for example, could be required to retrofit their homes to meet federal “green” guidelines in order to sell their homes, if the cap-and-trade bill becomes law.
The bill, which now goes to the Senate, directs the administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to develop and implement a national policy for residential and commercial buildings. The purpose of such a strategy – known as the Retrofit for Energy and Environmental Performance (REEP) – would be to “facilitate” the retrofitting of existing buildings nationwide.
“The Administrator shall develop and implement, in consultation with the Secretary of Energy, standards for a national energy and environmental building retrofit policy for single-family and multi-family residences,” the bill reads.
It continues: “The purpose of the REEP program is to facilitate the retrofitting of existing buildings across the United States.”
Comments
What just happened.
What just happened to America?
Another case of dereliction of duty from our representatives; voting for laws no one has time to read nor understand. So in essence, they are not exercising due diligence and anyone voting on something they have not read should be recalled.
I don't know where Robert got his quote here, but like MANY people in the blogosphere, he is blowing smoke. There is NO SUCH provision in the bill! The "Perlmutter" amendment to the final bill specifically restricts the energy efficiancy labelling to new construction. Other areas of the bill provide for financial incentives for energy efficiency retrofits, but there is NO requirement that these be done for a home sale!
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