The House easily approved a non-binding, GOP-leadership-backed resolution Thursday declaring a potential carbon tax to combat climate change harmful to the economy.
“A carbon tax would be devastating to the manufacturing base, kill jobs, and rise costs for families all across this country,” Majority Whip Steve Scalise, R-La., who sponsored the resolution, said on the House floor before the vote. “The resolution is simple. It’s a sense of Congress that a carbon tax would be detrimental to American families and business.”
Democrats attacked the measure, approved by a 229-180 margin, as a pointless effort that shows Republicans continue to deny the challenge and costs of climate change, which many scientists blame for more frequent severe storms, rising sea levels, and melting ice caps.
“Republicans are burying their head in the sand again,” said Rep. Barbara Lee, D-Calif. ”If we do nothing, it will be our grandchildren left with the price tag. We can pass policies that dramatically reduce greenhouse gases and promote the economy. Carbon tax fear mongering won’t work. Americans understand the true threat to the economy is climate change.”
The Republican-led House has already passed similar symbolic gestures in previous sessions of Congress, and it’s unlikely lawmakers would approve a carbon tax anytime soon.
But the latest vote comes as some conservatives are promoting the imposition of a carbon tax, arguing that placing a fee on emissions of the greenhouse gas would send the markets a signal to reduce fossil fuel use and encourage clean energy development.
Six Republicans voted against the measure condemning a carbon tax, which some conservative groups took as a positive sign that momentum is shifting.
“Thrilled to see 6 rebels in the Republican caucus,” said Joseph Majkut, a climate scientist at Niskanen Center, a libertarian think tank supporting a carbon tax. “The spark that will light the fire?”
The Republicans are Reps. Carlos Curbelo, Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, and Francis Rooney of Florida, Brian Fitzpatrick of Pennsylvania, Trey Hollingsworth of Indiana, and Mia Love of Utah.
Seven Democrats, meanwhile, voted to support the resolution.
Next week, Curbelo, a moderate Republican facing re-election, is planning to introduce a carbon tax bill, showing the emerging split within some quarters of the party.
Curbelo, who is co-chairman of the bipartisan Climate Solutions Caucus, represents a state already feeling the effects of sea level rise.
Curbelo, according to the news outlet Axios, is expected to unveil his bill at an event Monday at the National Press Club, where he will be joined by representatives of the Niskanen Center, and environmental groups.
In addition, major oil and gas companies including Exxon Mobil, BP, and Shell, say they support some type of tax on carbon emissions, although they are reluctant to lobby on the issue.
Those three companies belong to a group called the Climate Leadership Council that is promoting a plan that would impose a carbon tax beginning at $40 per ton, and give the proceeds to the public through rebates, while scrapping carbon regulations imposed by the Environmental Protection Agency.
That group is led by James Baker, who served as secretary of state under former President George H.W. Bush.
But many powerful conservative groups oppose a carbon tax, showing the continued divisiveness of climate change within the Republican Party.
More than 40 conservative groups, including Americans for Tax Reform, Americans for Prosperity, and Club for Growth, signed a letter this week supporting the anti-carbon tax resolution because such a tax could “lead to less income and fewer jobs for American families.”
