Cap-and-trade progress (?) federally

The Waxman-Marley bill advanced out of one committee. It's clearly a Christmas tree bill (932 pages!) but maybe something is better than nothing. Maybe. One warning sign:

Experts said that billions of dollars would go to local electricity providers, oil companies and energy-intensive industries to blunt the impact of pricing carbon for years to come. Low- and middle-income earners would also get protection, but many economists said consumers would have been better served by simplifying or cutting taxes. Some groups also said that the opportunity to get credit for reducing emissions abroad could mean that there would be little to no new incentives for reducing emissions in the United States.

I'm not sure what all that means exactly: giving money to oil companies is not a clear way to "blunt the impact of pricing carbon", and from an environmental perspective you don't want to blunt the impact... the whole point is to raise prices!