Dying Carbon Tax Bills Flopping On The Sands Of Congress; 10 Bills, Two Years, Two GOP Co-sponsors
It’s an unexpected turn for an idea that, for more than a decade, was often at the forefront of plans to address climate change — and even held the promise of garnering bipartisan support. Al Gore, the former vice president whose documentary An Inconvenient Truth became an unlikely smash hit, called the need for carbon pricing “just as plain as day.” Both Barack Obama and John McCain ran for president in 2008 promising to address climate change through a national cap-and-trade program. A federal carbon tax drew support in recent years from such strange bedfellows as ExxonMobil and Senator Bernie Sanders, corporate America’s sworn enemy.
Today, however, both parties are largely silent on the idea, if not outright hostile. On the Republican side, a lot has changed since 2008. Even as more Republicans — especially younger ones — say they care about climate change, the GOP’s proposals to tackle global warming have drifted toward the absurd. Earlier this year, House Republicans vowed to address rising greenhouse gas levels by planting 1 trillion trees; President Donald Trump famously called climate change a Chinese “hoax,” and has moved to withdraw the United States from the landmark Paris climate agreement.
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The thing is, Republicans in Congress who back the idea tend to get bounced from office. Bob Inglis, a former representative from South Carolina, introduced a bill in 2009 called the Raise Wages, Cut Carbon Act — in which revenue from a carbon tax would offset a cut in payroll taxes — then was ousted from his House seat in the 2010 election. “In a way, I’m the worst commercial for it,” Inglis told Grist, wryly. Carlos Curbelo, a Republican climate advocate from Florida, also lost his seat in the House in 2018, shortly after proposing similar carbon tax legislation.
And, while representatives and senators have proposed 10 carbon pricing bills in the last two years (nine for a carbon tax, one for a cap-and-trade system), only two Republicans have signed on as cosponsors: Representative Francis Rooney, a Republican from Florida, is a cosponsor on four, and Representative Ryan Fitzpatrick from Pennsylvania has cosponsored one. The bill pushed by the Citizens’ Climate Lobby has 82 cosponsors, but Rooney is the only Republican — and he’s about to retire. Staton believes that many Republicans are open to the idea of a tax — but are afraid to show support for it. “It’s dangerous for them to come out on climate,” she said. “It’s dangerous politically.”
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https://grist.org/politics/who-killed-the-carbon-tax-republicans-or-democrats/