The House has voted to condemn a carbon tax as “detrimental to American families and businesses.”
The House voted Friday to condemn a potential carbon tax, closing the door on a climate change policy popular in some conservative circles.Lawmakers passed, by a 237-163 vote, a GOP-backed resolution listing pitfalls from a tax on carbon dioxide emissions and concluding that such a policy “would be detrimental to American families and businesses, and is not in the best interest of the United States.”Six Democrats voted with the GOP for the resolution. No Republicans dissented.The non-binding resolution is first and foremost a defensive measure, to get lawmakers on the record against a carbon tax, in case it’s part of a future proposal, perhaps part of a comprehensive tax reform package or in return for repealing certain regulations.President Obama has not proposed a carbon tax, and while many Democrats support the idea, it has not taken hold as a serious legislative proposal in years.
Obama has, in fact, proposed carbon taxes, the most recent being the $10 per barrel tax on oil; a fact noted in this Hill article: “The House also voted 253-144 to condemn Obama’s proposal from earlier this year to impose a $10.25 tax on each barrel of oil, an idea that never got much support in Congress.”
Obama has also attempted to use his “pen and phone” to ensure carbon “penalties” via the executive branch to enact the cap and tax bill that did not pass Congress.
The Hill continues:
Majority Whip Steve Scalise (R-La.), who sponsored the resolution, accused Obama of trying to push carbon taxes through his executive actions after his cap-and-trade bill failed to pass Congress.“Even with that defeat, President Obama still tries to come back with a carbon tax, through other means, whether it’s regulations or whether it’s superimposed carbon taxes through the [Environmental Protection Agency] and some of the other things they’re doing,” he said.Scalise objected to the scientific consensus that the climate is changing due mainly to human activity through greenhouse gas emissions and accused carbon tax proponents of trying to control weather.“They talk about somehow being able to create policy that would stop hurricanes and change the sea level rising, for goodness sake. As if some policy’s going to do that,” he said. “And by the way, the result of their policies will increase carbon in the Earth’s atmosphere.”
These arguments based in facts and science, however, do not work. The “problem” the progressive left seeks to address with carbon taxes and other such “climate change” legislation has nothing to do with the Earth’s atmosphere, its climate, or anything else they claim concerns them.
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