Sen. Chuck Schumer said he thinks Congress could pass legislation to impose a fee on carbon emissions if Democrats win back the Senate and presidential frontrunner Hillary Clinton takes the White House in 2016.
The New York Democrat said he envisions Republicans would push for a value-added tax in that scenario to shore up federal revenues, but that Democrats would reject it, calling it “regressive.” But Schumer, who is in line to take over as the Senate Democratic leader after Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid retires in 2016, said a carbon tax is a type of value-added tax his party would support.
“But there’s one sort of [value-added tax] Democrats might be for — and that’s a carbon tax. So you might get a compromise along those lines,” Schumer said at a Capitol Hill event hosted by Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse, D-R.I., who is co-sponsoring his own carbon fee bill with Sen. Brian Schatz, D-Hawaii.
Most Republicans have outright rejected the idea of a carbon fee.
That’s partially because many have signed a pledge by powerful lobby group Americans for Tax Reform to resist raising taxes. The lobby group contends that even a “revenue neutral” tax that offers a corporate tax rate reduction or a rebate to residents to offset energy cost increases would violate that pact.
A majority of Republicans also are skeptical that human activity plays a role in warming the planet, despite most scientists saying humans are driving climate change largely through burning greenhouse gas-emitting fossil fuels.
Schumer noted a carbon fee isn’t likely this year or next, saying that even his party hasn’t come around to uniformly support a fee on emissions.
Still, he suggested the tide was changing.
He alluded to a letter last month from six major global oil and gas companies — Royal Dutch Shell, BP, Eni, Total, Statoil and BG Group — that endorsed a carbon fee. The move was seen as a calculation by oil companies that more stringent international climate policies would benefit natural gas, which they also produce, in power generation at the expense of coal, which is twice as carbon dense as natural gas. Oil, meanwhile, is expected to remain a major part of the transportation sector for decades.
“I think in 2017 people in both parties might come to that as a way, as the best way, to fund the government,” Schumer said.
