The Institute for Energy Research has done a little digging on how CBO cooked the books to determine that Waxman-Markey — which Sen. Ben Cardin (D., MD) admits is “the most significant revenue-generating proposal of our time”– er, really won’t cost anything.

At first blush, it would seem that rent-seeking industry and their lobbyists have a slightly different view than CBO, and gleefully agree with the good senator’s assessment. (I wonder where they think all that loot is to come from?)

Well, as it turns out, upon further scrutiny, CBO admits that . . . ok, you’ll have to fork over a bunch of money. But here’s the kicker (oh, these scamps!): apparently, to the boys down in accounting, what’s good for the rent-seekers is really good for the rest of us. All you need to do is just “spread the wealth around” — you know, on paper, after they liberate it from your wallet. Some sort of averaging, you see. It’s really quite amazing what they can do nowadays. I feel richer already, just reading about Exelon and AEP’s windfall!

Read the whole thing.