Expressing the Sense of Congress That A Carbon Tax Would Be Detrimental to the United States Economy

Floor Speech

Mr. Speaker, I am listening to my dear friend from Missouri, and it is an example of sort of being disconnected from reality.

My friends on the other side of the aisle, for instance, refuse to accept a compromise that is on a bipartisan basis that would make a difference in dealing with immigration. I think that will rank along with Speaker Boehner's refusal to accept the bipartisan Senate compromise for immigration and not even allow it to come to the floor to be voted on.

Today, we are having an exercise in futility. There is no carbon tax pending, and Republicans have nothing here that would be significant. It is a nonbinding resolution, and as I say, it is disconnected from the reality.

The reality, for example, for those of us on the West Coast, is that the climate crisis is real. It becomes more apparent and urgent every day. This winter was the warmest winter on record in the United States, 5.4 degrees higher. 2023 was the world's warmest year on record. In fact, the 10 warmest years have occurred in the last 10 years.

What is the response from our Republican friends? They make stuff up and move away from solutions that would make a difference.

Every independent analyst, Republican and Democrat alike, agrees that the way that we are going to deal with carbon pollution, notwithstanding some of the climate deniers on the other side of the aisle, is a carbon tax. The rest of the world is moving in this direction.

Having a price on carbon is the most efficient, cost-effective, and fair way to deal with this crisis. However, the majority is having none of it. As I say, my colleagues on the other side of the aisle are making stuff up in the face of things that have real consequences.

There are people dying in the Pacific Northwest from the unprecedented heat wave. We have had unprecedented events in California, extreme weather events. The costs of those extreme weather events dwarf the costs that my Republican colleagues are dreaming up in fantasy.

In 2022, the climate disasters totaled more than $165 billion. The United States needs to double down on our investments in the Inflation Reduction Act to halt the worst and most expensive consequences of the climate crisis.

Instead, my Republican colleagues put forth a nonbinding resolution that doubles as a love letter to Big Oil. It paints a grim picture of the impacts of a tax on carbon, a picture that is, in fact, completely divorced from reality. Areas that have placed taxes on carbon have fostered innovation, and it is a preferred approach for most of the thoughtful business community.

The global cost of climate change is estimated to be over $3 trillion per year by 2050. Further investments in oil and gas without accounting for the true costs of carbon will overly drag down our economy and increase this sum.

Moreover, this resolution purports to show concern about the costs to American families associated with a carbon tax, particularly the poor, the elderly, and those on fixed incomes. Those are the people who are going to pay the cost most dramatically from continued efforts to allow the climate crisis to move forward.

Every single Republican voted against the Inflation Reduction Act, a bill that has already saved households hundreds of dollars in energy costs, not to mention hundreds more on prescription drugs. The Republicans all voted against it, yet the majority's constituents are benefiting. My colleagues didn't care about reducing the costs back then, and we shouldn't fall victim to Republicans' attempts to pretend about reducing costs now.

The longer we fail to deal meaningfully with the climate crisis, the defining question of the 21st century, our answer will determine the lives of our children and grandchildren.

We have made already significant strides in lowering costs and investing in clean energy. This love letter to Big Oil is absolutely the wrong step, and it is one they will be unable to justify to their children and grandchildren. It is a wrongheaded, inaccurate approach, one that is sadly not where we should be now, not where they should be, and it defies reality.

I strongly urge--even though it is nonbinding and doesn't make a difference, we will go ahead and play this out--but I urge its rejection.

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Mr. BLUMENAUER. Mr. Speaker, I am listening to my dear friend from Montana and the University of Oregon, and I couldn't disagree more.

We have the opportunity to produce clean energy in the United States. The cost today of alternatives with wind and solar is cheaper than fossil fuel, and this is where the world is going. Having our technological edge to produce cleaner energy and not be susceptible to those international forces is absolutely essential.

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Mr. BLUMENAUER. Mr. Speaker, I just have to note that my dear friend from West Virginia, a woman I deeply respect, would have reliance on fossil fuel for energy security.

In her own State of West Virginia, the cheapest sources of power are renewable energy sources like wind and solar, which we incentivized with our policies and all of our Republican friends voted against.

The market has made a judgment that these are the most cost-effective ways to generate energy.

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Mr. BLUMENAUER. Mr. Speaker, Republicans used to believe in market forces. They were part of a bipartisan effort to reduce acid rain, which had a cap, which in the short term increased price, but drove innovation. We solved that problem for a fraction of the alternative costs.

Denying the ability to price carbon is turning our back on innovation, turning our back on what the rest of the world is doing, and providing more opportunities for Americans.

I hope at some point they will rediscover the power of market forces and join us in efforts with the legislation that we have passed to harness those market forces and promote American innovation, as we are seeing now under the Inflation Reduction Act.

Mr. Speaker, I deeply appreciate the gentleman's tutorial on economics and history, and I could not agree with him more. I hope at some point our Republican colleagues rediscover the power of the market, like what would happen with the carbon tax, which we are seeing around the world moving in this direction.

There are two basic approaches we can take. One is to use market forces, like putting a price on carbon, or simply being the handmaiden to Big Oil.

I can't think of a more dramatic example of the fallacy of that approach than to look at the home State of our Speaker that has done the bidding of Big Oil for decades.

What is the result of that impact in Louisiana? It hasn't been a hotbed of economic development. To the contrary. But there are other consequences that are serious.

A recent study by the Environmental Integrity Project found that Louisiana is home to eight of the worst polluting refineries in the entire country. Their refineries make up half of the top 10 ammonia polluters. A region on the banks of the Mississippi River between New Orleans and Baton Rouge is known as Cancer Alley because of the negative consequences of the petroleum industry and the refusal of the State to provide regulation.

The untrammeled growth of the fossil fuel industry has resulted in cutting up the landscape, the loss of about one football field a day into the Gulf of Mexico. Parts of the State are sinking. Their low birth rates and preterm births are double the national average, and respiratory ailments are nearly triple. The vast majority of the residents who suffer are Black.

Look at New Orleans and the consequences of Louisiana to what happens when you just do the bidding of the oil companies. It is not better environmentally and it is not better economically. It has been, pure and simply, a disaster.

An alternative is to use market forces, to tax what we would like least of. A carbon tax would raise prices for some, but it would foster innovation. That is exactly what we did with our approach to acid rain. It sparked innovation and cured that problem much more cost effectively than other solutions.

It is time for the Republican Party to rediscover market forces and be able to do what the vast majority of economic experts--Republican and Democrat, conservative and liberal--agree is the best solution. Rather than lots of rules and regulations, use market forces. We have done that with our Inflation Reduction Act, sparking innovation and investment, even though all my Republican friends voted against it.

Mr. Speaker, there are two approaches: Give in to Big Oil, abandon your principles for environmental protection, market forces for innovation, or look at alternatives that will help us deal with the crisis of our age, the climate crisis.

I would hope at a time when it looks like we are starting to see some adjustment on the other side of the aisle, we are starting to see some of the people in the governing wing of the Republican Party moving forward to try and rein in some of their more extreme elements, we may actually deal with what we should have done months ago, which is fund the government according to the agreement that 149 Republicans signed onto last spring.

I have had a little fun tweaking some of my Republican friends, but we know how this is ending up, and that is exactly what is happening. Some people in the more extreme elements of the Republican Party may feel a little pinched, but this is what we agreed to.

This is an approach that solves the problem. It is not a good solution. It is not the solution we would have done, but it is the only one that the extreme elements of the Republican Party will allow us to move forward with. It is better than having a collapse of the economy, our agreements moving forward.

I hope that we will have the governing wing of the Republican Party moving forward and that this might be a path forward because there are so many things that we ought to be able to agree upon: innovation; protecting the American public; lowering costs, like we did with our legislation for prescription drugs, like we are doing now in terms of energy innovation.

The record is pretty strong. We have the lowest rate of inflation of any developed economy in the world. We have watched the inflation rate, which my Republican friends are focused on, and I think it is okay, but they deny reality. No major country has done a better job of controlling inflation.

It was 6 percent in 2021. It dropped to 5.6 percent, and this last year, 3.1 percent. Those are the facts; the best performance in the world. All the railing, yelling, and finger pointing don't change those facts.

We have opportunities that we could do on a bipartisan basis to help solve the immigration problem that was worked out on a bipartisan basis in the other Chamber. In fact, we were moving toward an agreement that would put more investment in border security, beefing up opportunities that could have bipartisan support that would help the public. It is not our solution. We would like to do better, but we thought it was the best we could do with our Republican allies.

As it was moving toward enactment, Donald Trump went gunnysack: We can't do that. It would not help my reelection campaign. Afterwards, we have seen Republicans retreat from a bipartisan solution on immigration.

I think this will be as shameful as my friend John Boehner's refusal to allow us to vote on a bipartisan solution from the Senate on immigration back in 2012. We can do better than that if the other side of the aisle will listen to some of the governing wing of the Republican Party, not be held hostage by the most extreme, and work with us on these elements that are already bearing fruit.

What will not bear fruit is tilting at an imaginary windmill of a carbon tax, misrelating what it is, and denying the reality of the costs for failure to deal with the climate crisis.

Mr. Speaker, I strongly urge rejection of this proposal. It is not going anywhere. It is not real. It is a sad distraction and an opportunity to misrepresent what we could do.

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