Gov. Daniels delivered the national GOP radio address today.  He spoke out against Democrat’s cap and trade scheme.  Have a listen:

Until recently the debate among Democrats in DC has focused mainly on how much Congress should spend to stimulate the economy, improve the environment and education, and provide health care for all.  It’s been fun.  Really.  It was kind of like Christmas shopping in December.  But the fun stops when the credit card bill comes in January.

It’s January in Washington.  The discussion among Democrats in recent weeks has turned sharply towards paying for their excess.  President Obama has proposed a cap and trade plan that will levy $65 billion in taxes on current economic activity.  Congressional Democrats are beginning to float the idea of a national sales tax to pay for health care.  Never mind pouring money into the $1.75 trillion hole the Democrat’s budget creates, my kids can worry about that.  These new taxes have nothing to do with catching up with current spending rates, they will only help finance future growth.

The debate in Washington has shifted from spending to whose taxes should be raised and by how much.  This is exactly the problem that Gov. Mitch Daniels and Statehouse Republicans have fought to avoid in Indiana by protecting state reserves from Democrats who have targeted them all year.  Protecting taxpayers isn’t some theoretical goal, steeped in the principles of limited government.  Once the surplus is gone there’s nowhere else to go for more money but the taxpayer.  That’s a risk worth remembering as the legislature prepares to go back to work on the budget in special session.  The risk to taxpayers is very real, but completely avoidable.

There’s one thing Mike forgot to mention in his post yesterday about the cap-and-trade debate: Just about everyone disagrees with him. Environmental interest groups do. Public interest groups do. Heck, even the energy companies themselves do.

The reason, not surprisingly, is because the Republican leadership has tried incredibly hard to paint this bill as something that it is not, and in the process have glossed over the countless late nights that lawmakers — including some in Indiana’s delegation — have spent crafting a bill that accomplishes the real change President Obama promised without bankrupting the state of Indiana.

Will there be rate increases? More than likely. Will they be catastrophic? Absolutely not.

And in the paraphrased words of one Indiana congressman I heard speak recently, all parties involved in this debate are warming to this plan because they know, in essence, that if we don’t pay a little now, we’ll be paying a lot more down the line to try and repair the damage done to our environment.

Matt Tully of Indy Star fame was at yesterday’s downtown “energy summit,” and he was less than kind in his appraisal of the event.

The event was so one-sided it seemed the lawmakers had a side bet to see who could ask the most leading question. Such as when Burton asked a like-minded witness this about the energy bill: “Do you believe this is part of a move toward an ideological-controlled economy?”

Or when Pence asked Gov. Mitch Daniels — an increasingly vocal critic of the energy plan — to explain why a group of energy industry leaders supports the bill.

Daniels suggested those leaders would actually agree with him and other cap-and-trade critics “if you tied them to a lie detector.”

Ah, another little-known rule of summits: Call those on the other side of the table liars.

Here’s a thought: If Pence wanted to know why people such as Duke Energy CEO Jim Rogers support the push to cap carbon emissions, why didn’t he ask them to speak? Here’s why: He wanted to hear from only a narrow group of group-thinkers.

These are the same individuals who for eight years helped shield this country from any and all substantial energy reform, protecting not only their pals in the energy sector, but also the international oil conglomerates who have held our country on a leash for decades.

We’ve been talking about energy reform since President Nixon was in office, and we finally have a national leader who has been able to build the kind of coalition necessary to actually make it work. It’s too bad the Republican Party can’t see past their own misguided talking points to notice that the country is leaving them behind.