Gerard Scimeca – Chairman, CASE
With the 2018 midterm elections just days away, Florida voters have stark choices up and down the ballot to decide the future of their state and country. Do they want to support the policies of lower taxes and a smart regulatory environment or reelect candidates that have campaigned on increasing taxes and growing the federal government?
The choice has become far less obvious in Florida’s 19th District, however, where incumbent Republican Francis Rooney has fully embraced a carbon tax proposal that will result in higher gas and electric bills for every Florida household and business. Rooney and other supporters of the legislation are marketing this bill as a free-market, conservative policy, but as the details are revealed it becomes abundantly clear that it is nothing more than a massive new tax on the energy Floridians rely on every day.
The bill, ironically dubbed the ‘The Market Choice Act’ was introduced this past summer by fellow Florida Republican Rep. Carlos Curbelo and co-sponsored by Rep. Rooney and Rep. Brian Fitzpatrick (R-PA).
In a recent interview with the Washington Examiner, Rooney said Curbelo’s carbon tax bill was not a new tax but should be referred to as an ‘incentive program’, saying it would, “incentivize people to not burn coal, but burn natural gas, and also invest in solar and wind.”He also called it a free enterprise solution, even though it’s sponsored by the government.
This could not be further from the truth. If this is not a new energy tax, then how is it going to generate $700 billion in revenue over a decade, as its sponsors claim? The carbon tax bill is an energy tax plain and simple and it would immediately raise gas prices and increase the average Americans’ energy costs by $275 by 2020. In addition to increased energy costs, the carbon tax bill would also create a border adjustment tax on imported goods, inevitably leading to increased prices on goods we use every day, including food and clothes. But it does not stop there.The legislation also taxes 19 American manufacturers for their emissions and grants the Environmental Protection Agency the power to decide additional businesses and sectors to tax, an extreme growth of government bureaucracy.
And for what gain? The stated goal of the bill’s proponents is a carbon emissions reduction that would result in a drop in global temperature by an insignificant 0.003 degrees Celsius by the end of the century. A United Nations climate report released this month concludes that in order for any significant climate benefit, a carbon tax would need to be set at an astonishing $5,500 per ton (equivalent to a $49 per gallon tax on gasoline) by 2030 and would need to jump to a whopping $27,000 per ton (equivalent to a $240 per gallon tax on gasoline) by 2100. This type of policy would be the beginning of the end to free market capitalism and is the kind of policy that conservatives have historically rejected. Thankfully, all but six congressional Republicans signed onto a resolution rejecting a carbon tax as bad policy in July.
Rep. Rooney campaigned as an unabashed conservative when he ran for Congress in 2016, which makes this turn to the far-left that much more perplexing. A carbon tax is an idea embraced by Hillary Clinton, Al Gore, and is nearly identical in all regards to similar legislation proposed by some of the most liberal Democrats in Congress. Even Canada, which is far more progressive than the U.S. on tax policy, is now in near revolt over a proposed carbon tax, with one environmental minister calling it nothing more than a “cash grab” and “jobs killer.”
As Rep. Rooney spends more time in his district leading up to the election on November 6, we would encourage his constituents to visit his campaign website, where he states he, “will fight to keep government limited, free of excessive regulations and responsive to “’We The People.’” A carbon tax runs against these foundational conservative ideals, and the first place Congressman Rooney can start in making good on this claim is by opposing this big-government tax on his constituents.
