Barack Obama's cap-and-trade plan has been floating around out there for a while. And I have told you several times how this scheme is nothing more than a tax increase, plain and simple. It increases taxes by creating a market for carbon emitted by companies, and these companies somehow have to recoup the costs to pay for these credits. How are they going to do this? Any logical business would increase prices for its customers.

And the Obama administration knows that this is the case. They have admitted that their plans to implement this cap-and-trade system will increase energy costs. Don't worry, Obama will make sure that the appropriate households aren't affected by these increasing costs. The plan is to use the revenue generated by the carbon trade system in order to "soften the impact of higher energy prices." But anyone worth more than the wheels on their house will not see any of these promised benefits. That's because the Obama administration says, "There will be those who are going to be vulnerable as we make this transition and ... we need to actually target the allowance value and revenues to those households, communities, and businesses."

Those who are "vulnerable" is just another way of saying .. those people who are poor and vote Democrat. Those people who can't afford to shoulder the burden of this society but are more than willing to reap the benefits of its massive government welfare system. Those are the people that the Barack Obama administration wants to aid in this transition. And are you really buying the fact that these government welfare checks to offset higher energy costs will only be temporary? No way. That's the beauty of government - once you get the people hooked on an entitlement program, you can never ever take it away and politicians will always have it as political leverage.