Dean: Low-Income People Hurt by Cap-and-Tax Will Recoup Cost with Less Asthma Emergency Room Visits

This could only come from one of the most outspoken mouthpieces of the left: the cap-and-trade proposal that recently passed the U.S. House and now up for debate in the Senate will save people money because it will lower health costs.

When CNBC named Howard Dean as a contributor back in March, it was difficult to understand what the former Vermont governor, 2004 presidential candidate and head of the Democratic National Committee and medical doctor would add to the discussion on a financial new network. But, on CNBC’s July 14 “The Call,” Dean found a way to utilize his medical expertise when touting cap-and-trade.

“I believe that for the $40 a year that the lowest income people pay in extra taxes or extra energy costs, they will more than recoup that having their kids spend less time in the emergency rooms because of asthma attacks,” Dean said. “This is a problem we have to deal with and I think the President has done the right thing.”

When Dean is not lending his wisdom to CNBC, he’s been out on the campaign trail promoting President Obama’s health care initiative, as recently revealed in a MoveOn.org advertisement.

One of the most devastating criticisms of cap-and-trade is that, because China, India and other developing nations will never reign in their own, more voluminous emissions, it will economically handicap the U.S. without seriously addressing climate change. Dean did his best to turn this argument on its head, bizarrely saying cap-and-trade will make it easier for other nations to develop and reach the levels of the industrialized world.

“If you want the rest of the world to join in on the – what’s going to be the Copenhagen treaty, hopefully the sequel to what Kyoto has been, obviously everybody agrees you’ve got to get India, China and Brazil to be a piece of this,” Dean said. “It costs a lot less to take carbon out of the air in the United States and Europe than it does in developing countries, particularly poor countries. So what cap-and-trade really does is an international mechanism to make it easier to reduce the CO₂ load and still make it possible to develop countries.”