CEI Supports Resolution Opposing a Carbon Tax
This week, the U.S. House will vote on an anti-carbon tax resolution, introduced earlier this year by Reps. Steve Scalise (R-LA) and David McKinley (R-WV), “expressing the sense of Congress that a carbon tax would be detrimental to the United States economy.” Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI) energy and environmental policy experts said the following about H.Con.Res 119.
Director of CEI’s Center for Energy and Environment Myron Ebell said:
“Carbon taxes are not a solution to anything except increasing government revenues and control over people. Carbon taxes will raise the cost of electricity, motor fuels, airfares, manufactured products, transporting freight, food, and anything else that uses energy. Nearly every proposed carbon tax proposal includes an automatic escalator, which means even if the tax starts small it will go up every year—ever increasing tax revenues without having to vote for them.
“Carbon taxes remain political poison around the world. Last month, in Ontario, Canada, the ruling Liberal Party after 15 years in office was overwhelmingly defeated by the Progressive Conservatives. New Premier Doug Ford’s top campaign promise was to stop the carbon tax in parliament.”
CEI Senior Fellow Marlo Lewis also commented on the resolution:
“Policymakers need to remember that affordable energy is vital to the growth and competitiveness of the U.S. economy, and the only way a carbon tax ‘works’ is by making our most plentiful and reliable energy sources more costly. Since taxes have the power to destroy, a carbon tax has the unique potential to bankrupt the coal oil, and natural gas industries, which supply 78 percent of all the energy Americans consume.
“Even a ‘revenue-neutral’ carbon tax does not mean it would be economically-harmless. It would be short-sighted to believe that Washington would enact something as controversial and unpopular as a new tax that would not bring in federal revenues.”
Read the coalition letter in support of H.Con.Res 119 signed by 41 free-market groups here.
Read more from Marlo Lewis: “Carbon Tax: Political Poison for the Conservative Movement.”