Gerard Scimeca – Chairman, CASE
April 3, 2019 – https://bit.ly/2Uyyzlp

As Democrats increasingly embrace socialism, the more sober among us remain quite aware of the disaster that socialism has wreaked throughout history, or continues to do today in nations like Venezuela. Willful blindness, it seems, is a growing epidemic. It is extremely troubling than that a self-described conservative lawmaker would join the ranks of those choosing to ignore history with his own case of acute myopia. Whatever name they may go by, big government plans designed to take more of our money while limiting personal freedoms are doomed to fail.

In this instance, it is Rep. Francis Rooney co-sponsoring something called the Energy Innovation and Carbon Dividend Act (EICDA), legislation touted as “bi-partisan” with only Rooney as a GOP signer. The proposal is little more than a recycled version of a cornerstone issue for the radical environmental movement, the dreaded carbon tax, long championed by liberals such as Nancy Pelosi, Al Gore, and Hillary Clinton. The point of a carbon tax is to jack up prices on anything that introduces carbon into the economy, from mining to refining to imported goods. Obviously, carbon is in just about everything Americans use and purchase, leading Mark Mills of the Manhattan Institute to call it a “tax on existence.”

Like socialism, the carbon tax is a massive fail that has met with disaster and rejection at every turn. Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau faced a fierce backlash on his carbon tax plan when even liberal-minded officials called it a “job killer,” forcing him to scale it back. In France, a similar fuel tax has sparked violent riots and clashes with police, so devastating was its effect on the French economy.

Congressman Rooney’s largely conservative constituents clearly didn’t have a massive new energy tax in mind when they voted for him. The carbon tax is a giant social engineering experiment, designed to make reliable and affordable energy so painfully expensive that it forces us to use renewable sources like wind and solar. Clearly, if people want wind and solar they have every right and freedom now to pay for it (usually through government subsidies), but consumer freedom is just one casualty of the carbon tax.

Supporters claim it will “save the planet,” by weaning us off fossil fuels and return a “dividend” back to consumers and taxpayers. This is nonsense. America is among the top nations in reducing carbon dioxide without the tax. Meanwhile, Asia and Europe are increasing their emissions. Rooney’s carbon tax, which disproportionately hurts low-income consumers, would lower American living standards while subsidizing other nations.

The tax will further have zero impact on global temperatures. Even when going by the government’s own climate science data, the effect of Rooney’s carbon tax would be absolutely negligible. Under the most optimistic scenarios, the effect would amount to mere fractions of a degree.

There’s plenty more not to like about the tax, including that it increases over the rate of inflation for the next three decades, slows economic growth, makes America less competitive, and creates a giant slush fund for politicians to give away to environmental activists and favored constituencies. Spoiler alert: there will be no “dividend.”

One can expect hare-brained, Utopian schemes from Democrats, who are always looking for ways to take our money and weigh down our economy. But it is downright disappointing to see Congressman Rooney in cahoots with this bunch while attempting to sell the fake veneer of “bi-partisanship.” Instead of pretending to save the planet, he should be saving us all from this massive, painful, and destructive tax.