By: Connie Hair

The House vote on the highly controversial Waxman-Markey “global warming” tax bill is scheduled for today as Speaker Nancy Pelosi (R-Cal.) is placing her eggs in one big vote basket, believing she can intimidate enough people to get the votes to pass the most far-reaching tax increase in United States history.  At this writing, the number of Democrats who plan to vote against the bill is substantial enough to force Dems to bring in their biggest guns -- President Obama and former Vice President Al Gore -- to work the phones to bring in the undecideds.

Congress will leave today for the 4th of July recess, after which the Dems plan to ram the cap-and-tax bill through the senate and then finish turning America into a European welfare state by passing President Obama’s healthcare nationalization plan.

The President stepped up to the plate yesterday giving a speech to try to bolster a wobbly Democrat Congressional majority that is being forced by its far-left leadership to choose between the environmental extremist goose-step and, in a great many cases, being re-elected.  The national energy tax is highly unpopular across the country and its passage would likely result in many Democrats holding naturally Republican seats being thrown under the bus for the so-called greater good.  That’s the only good news that would come from the bill’s passage in the House.

Hill staff sources tell HUMAN EVENTS that the bill faces a much tougher struggle in the Senate.

Rep. Mike Pence (R-Ind.) was on the media circuit to respond to the President’s speech, at one point reacting to the absurd notion the President put forth when he called the national energy tax a “jobs bill.”

“The Republicans have an ‘all of the above’ strategy that would increase our domestic exploration for oil and natural gas,” Pence said.  We'd subsidize the creation of new renewable forms of energy, including a tremendous investment in nuclear energy, but the Republican plan would actually create jobs, and the reality is what the President stepped to the podium today to advance will actually cost millions of American jobs, even if you count in the so-called green jobs that the President just referred to. One study after another suggests that, while there's different estimates on what the cap and trade legislation will cost each American household, there's really no dispute about the fact that this legislation will literally cost millions and millions of American jobs if it goes into effect.”

Pence was asked about all of the so-called green jobs the bill is somehow supposed to create overnight (quite a trick to create millions of jobs with a new energy scheme that does not yet exist and will not exist for a decade or more).

“I appreciate what the President said today,” Pence said.  “But I also remember what he said in January of 2008 to the San Francisco Chronicle's Editorial Board.  The President said, ‘Under my cap and trade system, electricity rates would necessarily sky rocket.’ He said that will cost money. They will pass that money on to consumers. … And I think the reason why they're struggling so much to pass this legislation [today] here on Capitol Hill is because members of Congress and millions of Americans realize this is nothing more than a national energy tax.  The last thing we need during this difficult economic recession is to pass a national energy tax that will literally cost millions of American jobs.”

Originally published at HumanEvents.com.