In a cap-and-trade system, the government sets a cap on greenhouse gas emissions and then lets companies trade carbon credits on the open market. The idea goes back to the days of the Reagan White House, when conservatives embraced the idea as a market-based approach to reducing pollution without direct regulation. Robert Stavins, a Harvard economist who sat on the EPA’s Environmental Economics Advisory Board under both Republican and Democratic administrations, told NPR that for many years, Republicans and conservatives loved this idea and it was Democrats who were skeptical.

But in 2009, it was Democrats who pushed a bill called the American Clean Energy and Security Act, which would have established a modest, nationwide cap-and-trade system.

As NPR reported, that’s when Republicans lambasted the idea as an example of big-government taxation run amok.

For example, in a 2010 campaign ad, Sen. Marco Rubio said: “If cap and trade were imposed on America it would devastate economic growth, it would get rid of jobs, it would be permanently debilitating.” Republicans called the bill and its approach “cap and tax” and said it was a move by tax-and-spend Democrats to grab revenue and make average people pay with higher electric bills.

That was the central claim made by conservative opponents of the legislation: that it would lead to sky-high electricity bills. But in a roundup of California news in Sunday’s Los Angeles Times, Mark Lifsher reports that it isn’t quite working out that way:

Almost 11 million California households will be getting some free electricity on their October-November bills, courtesy of the state’s “cap-and-trade” program for curbing greenhouse gas emissions.

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