Carbon Tax Hits All of Us Pt 2
With today's Fruit Grower Report, I'm Bob Larson. Last Thursday, for the first time, the Senate Energy, Environment and Technology Committee voted to approve a carbon tax bill. On Seattle's KLFE radio, Representative Jacqueline Maycumber said the governor's carbon tax does nothing but raise the cost of everything ...
MAYCUMBER ... "Think about food. Think about every aspect of your life, your heating, your food, getting to where you need to go. I mean everything in your life will be affected. And where that money goes, and this is my favorite part of this whole scheme, it goes to 'Connecting Washington,' electrifying the transportation grid. There's just a few places in the state of Washington where that's going to be effective."
Maycumber says talk of reducing carbon use does just the opposite ...
MAYCUMBER ... "Like as we talk about this low-carbon fuel standard and we talk about this carbon tax, it actually increases the carbon footprint because you're purchasing a coal product from overseas. And, hey I have a bio-chem degree, I like looking into stuff and seeing, does this help the environment, but it doesn't. You're selling something for revenue. If you want to talk about the environment, I'd love to talk about the environment. I could talk about it all day, but we're not, we're talking about revenue. We're talking about hurting those who can afford it the least."
Maycumber says the truth is in the title ...
MAYCUMBER ... "I really appreciate that they kept the word tax in there. I really appreciate as the governor is talking about his State of the State Address, and he's really hammering home that he's going to save the world, that he keeps that word tax in there because that is the truth. It is a tax."
The bill would create a new tax of $10 per metric ton of carbon emissions beginning in 2019 and would increase $2 a ton per year in 2021 until the price reached $30 a ton.
