The Environmental Protection Agency apparently thinks that manufacturing jobs are too dirty to consider when assessing the cost of the Waxman-Markey energy-rationing legislation that should come to a House vote tomorrow.

Wow.

We’ve seen several instances now (thanks to Heritage, IER, and others) of the Congressional Budget Office and the EPA cutting corners in order to rationalize the position that a cap-and-trade scheme — the very purpose of which is to make the price of energy “necessarily skyrocket” (in order to reduce energy use and thus CO2 emissions) — wouldn’t cost anything.

But the latest example I’ve found really takes the cake, given a) the real-world experience of Europe shows that cap-and-trade schemes make energy-intensive companies flee its crushing impact, and b) the emotional, and therefore political impact of that result.

Here it is: right near the front (page 15 of 107) of EPA’s modeled “assessment,” IGEM:

“IGEM does not capture emissions leakage because it does not model international emissions.*”

Now, considering you are actually claiming a cost figure for the bill, that sounds a bit like a non sequitur — or what we would call an “excuse” for ducking something touchy.

And then, what’s that asterisk? Oh! This:

“Emissions leakage occurs when a domestic GHG policy causes a relative price differential between domestically produced and imported goods. This causes domestic production, which embodies the greenhouse gas allowance price to shift abroad, and thus an increase in greenhouse gas emissions in other countries. Additionally, emissions leakage not associated with trade effects may occur when a GHG policy reduces domestic consumption of oil, lower demand for oil lowers the world oil price, which increases oil consumption in countries without a GHG policy thus increasing emissions.”

So. Those steel jobs that have arrived in Kentucky and Alabama already — and those others that were slated to come to Louisiana — to escape the EU’s version of cap-and-trade? Forget about them if Waxman-Markey passes. You can probably forget about a lot more jobs, too, that might otherwise have headed for the coal-friendly and job-hungry Midwestern states.

The kicker is that no one even dares to say anymore that Waxman-Markey would reduce emissions. (Wasn’t that the original purpose?) Any chance of that was given away with the ration cards that were handed out to well-represented lobbying interests, so that they could sell them to poor saps who didn’t lobby-up quite so well. And globally, emissions will rise because those jobs that might have been ours will flee to poorer countries with less batty environmental standards than rich countries have. Those poor countries might have unenlightened environmental regualtions, but they will have those precious — and, apparently to the Obama EPA, unsavory – jobs.

EPA didn’t bother considering that when telling us how much this program — which they really really want, by the way — would cost the U.S. economy.

Accept behavior like this from your civil servants — let your elected officials get away with passing laws like this — and deserve what you get. Or, in the case of manufacturing jobs, don’t get.