While the country focuses on the disgusting Health Care bill that is making its way to the Senate floor, hopefully towards an unceremonious death, another freedom killer lurks in the shadows.

The Cap and Trade bill that passed the House over the summer has stalled on the Senate floor, but this "green" bill is far from dead. The Waxman-Markey bill was a self proclaimed job killer even before it had a tidy 300 page addendum slapped on it at the last minute by Henry Waxman, the intensely odd looking Democrat from California.

This bill is downright scary (maybe even as scary than the health care bill if that's possible), and unfortunately, very few people fully understand it, this chubby Realtor included. The bill aims to reduce greenhouse gasses, and as Obama has promised (while he was running for office no less) the bill will cause utility prices to "skyrocket". In addition to the actual cost to us, the American tax payer, the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office leveled this assessment of the bill...

"The resource cost does not estimate the potential decrease in Gross Domestic Product (GDP) that could result from the cap. The reduction in GDP would also include indirect general equilibrium effects, such as changes in the labor supply resulting from reduction in real wages and potential reductions in the productivity of capital and labor."

The utility hiking and GDP slashing angle aside, the real disconcerting aspect of this bill for Realtors is how it relates to your own single family home. The bill will give Obama and friends the right, no the mandate, to enter your home and inspect it before you're "allowed" to sell. This is America. This is 2009, welcome to it. Perhaps we should write the EU and see if they'll extend us membership?

The same people who howled with anger when Bush passed the Patriot Act, a bill that was decried as a massive invasion of privacy and a complete intrusion into the everyday life of Americans, are now huge fans of this sweeping bill.

Bush's invasion into the privacy of a few was aimed at preventing another terrorist attack on our soil, a preventative measure that obviously worked. Obama's invasion into our personal space isn't just figurative, it's literal. Your home, your little piece of privacy, will need to be evaluated by a certified government inspector to gage how friendly it is to our environment. If your windows are drafty, you very well might have to replace them before a sale would be "permitted". If your furnace is old, better find $4k laying around to replace it. Inefficient refrigerator? I see a trip to Lowes in your near future. If you don't feel like updating the home per your new, even bigger brother's request, that's no problem really. You just won't be allowed to sell your home. After all, this is America, home of the marginally free, land of the willingly over regulated.

It's real folks, and I just can't help but wonder if all this government intrusion is really what my blue state friends were voting for. If this is what you had in mind, congratulations. I just don't see the logic in it all, and the administration is proving to be interested in blanketing us with every possible recovery snuffing instrument available at their disposal, with little regard for the long term and short term affects on the economy.

If a first term is this aggressive and this willing to disregard our individual liberties and the US Constitution, can you imagine what a second term might look like? This Waxman-Markey bill is regulatory garbage, if for no other reason than the fact that it impedes the free market. If we want companies to produce greener products, let's provide more tax incentives for them to do so instead of enforcing tax penalties if they don't.

If we make single family home efficiency issues a federal problem, we're going to raise the cost of selling a home. We're going to raise the cost of building a home. Did you know that the bill specifically calls for the inclusion of an outlet in every garage that would be capable of charging your electric car? Oh, you drive an SUV because you can't fit 4 kids in the back of a Prius? Or you actually noticed that the #1 and #2 best selling cars in the US last summer weren't cars at all, but GMC and Ford trucks? Better call the electrician anyway.

These so called green initiatives are great, and I fully encourage anyone and everyone to build these sorts of features into their homes. They should build these items, if they so desire, and if they have the disposable income and have a craving for all things green. They should do these things if they'd like to sell their home to the segment of the population that will pay for these sorts of green upgrades. They should have the choice to do these, they shouldn't be mandated to do them. In a housing market that is rife with short sales and distressed owners, Washington's "brightest" want to tack a few thousand dollars in actual hard cost onto the sale of a home, just so the government can get a piece of the action?

Say no to Waxman-Markey, say yes to a free market, and a more affordable real estate transaction.