Reagan Was A Liberal?

Reagan supported the evil, communist, job killing cap and trade

"Reagan would never have supported Obama's evil, job killing cap and tax!" Really? Looks like the conservative er liberal, or whatever he was, icon Ronald Reagan supported cap and trade. This, of course was back in the 1980s when Republicans still had some sanity left. From a new report entitled, The GOP Changes Its Tune on Cap and Trade:

"Like Palin, many of today’s public officials are repudiating Reagan’s legacy of cap and trade for cheap political gain and to curry favor with the polluting industries that are supporting attacks on those who voted for a cap-and-trade market mechanism to reduce global warming pollution.


A little history is in order. Cap and trade was developed as a more flexible, market-based system to reduce environmental pollution compared to the so-called “command and control” model employed by environmental laws in the 1970s. The old system required each polluting facility to make a fixed reduction in air or water contamination, which ignored that some facilities could cut pollution more cheaply than others.


Cap and trade is a cost-effective alternative that allows the firms that can more cheaply reduce their emissions below their required limit to sell any additional reductions to companies that are not able to make reductions as easily. This creates a system that guarantees a set level of overall reductions while rewarding the most efficient companies and ensuring that the cap can be met at the lowest possible cost to the economy.


The Reagan White House conceived the first cap-and-trade program to reduce pollution. It was used in the 1980s to phase out lead in gasoline at a lower cost. An EPA analysis shows:


…estimated savings from the lead trading program of approximately 20 percent over alternative programs that did not provide for lead banking, a cost savings of about $250 million per year.


President Reagan also signed the Montreal Protocol in 1987 to slash the production and use of chemicals that deplete the upper ozone layer essential to screen out cancer-causing ultraviolet rays. His administration established a cap-and-trade system to implement the chemical reductions the protocol required. A 2006 scientific assessment concluded that “the Montreal Protocol is working” to reduce chemicals and protect the ozone layer."

As with anything since January 2009, if Barack Obama is for it, it must be evil, socialist, job killing, un-American, and treasonous. But, when Reagan did it, naturally, it was okay.