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

Floor Speech

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Mr. LARSON of Connecticut. Mr. Speaker, I am delighted to be on the floor and join in this debate.

I must, along with my colleague from Oregon, express frustration. This body should be about the vitality of ideas. Whatever those ideas are, in a democracy, there ought to be the willingness to express them.

Mr. Blumenauer has detailed, at length, the lack of public hearings. Listen, I get it. This is a messaging opportunity. This has no force of law. All this does is say what the sensibilities are of the Congress.

Now, what does the public think of the sensibilities of the Congress? What the public thinks is that we are all bluster and no solution and that we never take the time to sit down and measure twice and then cut. We just simply don't do that in our committees.

And so the vitality of ideas, a very noble idea expressed by a Republican, Mr. Inglis, many sessions ago and embraced by many conservative economists in the Reagan, in the Nixon, and in the Bush administrations about providing certainty in terms of what we need to do and a revenue stream that has this at its core: tax pollution--tax pollution--at its source, and pass the savings on to the consumers.

We know the volumes that are produced. We know the science behind this. There should be an open and clear-eyed debate on this; but not only a debate about the pros and cons, but how about something refreshing for the American people--a solution. It may not be the bill that I proposed or that Bob Inglis proposed or that any number of people have embraced, but you have major companies, including major oil companies that will be taxed, say, no, this is a sensible way for us to embrace this, and we are enjoined by the very people who this would tax and by conservative economists who say, yeah, we ought to take a look at this not only from the standpoint of the certainty that it will provide, but the known certainty of what pollution does. And it is not just about climate change. It is about the health of the air that we breathe, what we are poisoning in the atmosphere for our children, what happens with respect to the effects of asthma and what happens in terms of the people in coal mines from black lung disease.

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Mr. LARSON of Connecticut. These debilitating diseases scream out for the Congress not to have a message opportunity that may or may not advantage one side or the other in the realm of politics, but how about a solution?

How about us doing what Mike Kelly suggested, to work together in the committee to come up with a positive solution as to how to address this? Pass the savings along to the consumer. Develop a revenue system that will, in fact, allow us to rebuild our country that is crumbling around us.

Let's take those steps and the responsibility that we all have to the citizens to provide them with solutions, not bluster.

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