The House approved two non-binding resolutions against President Obama’s environmental agenda Friday afternoon that Democrats criticized as being pointless.
The resolutions expressed the chamber’s disapproval of a carbon tax and Obama’s proposed $10.25 tax on each barrel of crude oil. No carbon tax legislation has been introduced to Congress, and no budgets introduced to Congress have included the proposed oil tax.
The resolution against a carbon tax passed 237-163, with six Democrats voting in favor of the measure, and the resolution against Obama’s proposed oil tax passed 253-144, with 23 Democrats voting against.
Many Democrats said they didn’t understand why House Republicans introduced the two measures. Rep. Peter DeFazio, D-Ore., said Republicans didn’t include the oil tax in their budgets and no carbon tax measure is being considered, so he didn’t see the point of Friday’s vote.
“[Obama] proposed it, they’re not going to take it up, why are we wasting time talking about something they’re not going to put in the schedule?” he asked. “It’s not clear to me.”
He added resolutions were just “meaningless” pieces of paper.
Rep. John Larson, D-Conn., called the votes “a messaging opportunity.”
“This has no force of law. All this does is say what the sensibilities of the Congress are,” he said. “Now what does the public think of the sensibilities of the Congress are? The public thinks we’re all bluster and no solutions.”
However, Republicans said the votes were necessary to tell Obama that lawmakers are against his environmental agenda.
Rep. Mike Kelly, R-Pa., said the administration needs to be aware that its environmental policies, while probably well-intentioned, have “unintended bad consequences” on regular Americans.
He said the administration’s arguments that a carbon tax and the $10.25 oil tax would be paid by fossil fuel companies are disingenuous because the reality is that they will pass the cost onto consumers.
“We’re saying don’t worry about it, that’s going to be charged upstream … when we know every single cost and every single tax is paid downstream,” he said.
Majority Whip Steve Scalise, R-La., said a carbon tax or an oil tax would hurt the administration’s goals to cut carbon emissions, which many scientists believe cause climate change. Scalise was the lead sponsor of the anti-carbon tax resolution.
Scalise said the jobs that companies would create in the United States would be pushed to China and India. More relaxed environmental policies in those countries would mean more carbon would go into the atmosphere because there would be fewer incentives for companies to innovate cleaner energy.
Some Democrats criticized Republicans for using the resolutions to kill environmental legislation without giving the ideas a proper legislative hearing. However, Scalise said the matter had been argued and decided early in the Obama administration when a cap-and-trade program died in the Senate.
“We’ve had hearings on this, there’s data all around that confirms how devastating a carbon tax would be to the U.S. economy,” he said.
