Cap-and-Tax Won't Reduce Emissions Until 2020

For the next 11 years as you're paying the massive new taxes required by Obama's cap-and-tax energy bill, just remember that despite all that money emissions won't be reduced at all until 2020:

The Waxman-Markey climate bill (HR 2454) will not require emissions reductions below projected business as usual (BAU) growth in emissions for at least a decade ahead, according to an EPA analysis [pdf]. EPA projects that firms covered under the bill's cap and trade program will opt to purchase over one billion tons of offsets each year from 2012-2020 rather than reduce their own emissions.

EPA predicts that firms would use 110 - 120 million metric tons (mmt) of available domestic offsets each year between 2012 and 2020 [see graphic, p. 6] and the full 1 billion mmt of international offsets permitted under the cap and trade program [p. 5]. If offsets are utilized at the levels projected by EPA, cumulative emissions in the sectors of the U.S. economy covered by the Waxman-Markey cap and trade program will be legally permitted to exceed EPA's business as usual emissions rates from 2012-2020 by nearly five billion mmt. If emissions in covered sectors were actually required to fall to the 17% below 2005 levels by 2020 targeted by the legislation, cumulative emissions would be just 50.1 billion mmt, 10 billion mmt lower than the levels legally permitted under EPA's projections for offsets utilization.

Obvious question - why do it? (Sorry, too obvious for Congress.)