The non-partisan Congressional Budget Office (CBO) on 19 June 2009 released an analysis (also available as PDF file)concluding that the cap-and-trade program currently being considered by the U.S. House of Representatives would by 2020 cost an average of $175 per household annually. Representing 0.2 percent of the average households’ after-tax income, the estimate falls far below the inflated estimates made by opponents of H.R. 2454, the American Clean Energy and Security Act of 2009. For example, the Heartland Institute claimed in a full page ad in the Washington Post (A5, 17 June 2009), that the average family’s annual energy bill would be increased "by at least $1,500 year."
 
A separate analysis issued on 23 June by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency similarly concludes that "cap & trade policy has a relatively modest impact on U.S. consumers assuming the bulk of revenues from the program are returned to households." The EPA analysis [PDF], estimates that the cap-and-trade program under HR 2454 would reduce average annual household consumption by $80 to $111 dollars per year. The Energy and Commerce Committee of the House of Representatives released a readable summary of the EPA analysis.
 
Neither of the analyses quantify the potential benefits of slowing the pace of climate change by reducing emissions of greenhouse gases under the bill. A report issued by the U.S. Climate Change Science Program last week concluded that "choices made about emissions in the next few decades will have far-reaching consequences for climate change impacts. Over the longer term, lower emissions will lessen both the magnitude of climate change impacts and the rate at which they appear." Climate change impacts, the report adds, will be largely negative – and reputable economists agree that the costs of the impacts of rapid climate change will far exceed the costs of reducing emissions. See The Cost of Climate Change: What We’ll Pay if Global Warming Continues Unchecked [PDF] (Washington, DC: Natural Resources Defense Council, May 2008). See also the press release issued by the Natural Resources Defense Council when the report was released, New Report Finds Doing Nothing on Global Warming Comes with a Huge Price Tag (22 May 2008).