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WASHINGTON – Sen. Barbara Boxer has added an $802 billion tax cut to her Environment and Public Works Committee's global warming bill which is set to be on the Senate floor right after Congress' Memorial Day recess.

Boxer called the reworking of the measure "a consensus document." The new bill also includes $955 billion worth of deficit reduction...

...The money in the measure – which would be paid out through 2050, the life of the legislation – would come from the so-called cap-and-trade system under which carbon credits would be bought and sold by utilities, manufacturers and other companies that emit carbon dioxide...

...The bill summary shows that Boxer and her colleagues have attempted to allay the fears of a variety of sectors. Boxer said she has heard from people around the country who own old buildings, for example, that they are worried that the cost to make those buildings energy efficient would be prohibitive...

One analysis of that bill by CRA International, an international business consulting firm, predicts the Lieberman-Warner bill could cost $4 trillion to $6 trillion over the next 40 years, according to an editorial in the November 11 Washington Times.

If that bill were passed and made law, the tax would cost every man, woman and child – more than 303 million Americans – $494 a year, a significant burden on the U.S. economy.

Former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan warned that such carbon caps have a cost – stating in his book, “The Age of Turbulence,” that the effect would be limited unless imposed globally. Caps imposed only on the United States would be detrimental.

“There is no effective way to meaningfully reduce emissions without negatively impacting a large part of an economy,” Greenspan wrote. “Net, it is a tax. If the cap is low enough to make a meaningful inroad into CO2 emissions, permits will become expensive and large numbers of companies will experience cost increases that make them less competitive. Jobs will be lost and real incomes of workers constrained.”