May 2021
Dear Members of Congress,
Independent Women’s Voice fully supports Representative Scalise’s resolution condemning a carbon tax.
While many of us are concerned about combating climate change, a carbon tax would increase energy prices for Americans and make it harder to afford other essentials, like food and gasoline, and would particularly harm lower income families who can least afford these rising costs. Advocates of extreme climate policies like a carbon tax often argue that we need to enact these policies in order to improve the environment. Yet we have been making important strides in terms of clean energy and reducing emissions thanks to innovation, not to taxes or onerous regulations.
The April jobs report already showed that our pandemic policies are hurting the American economy and rising fuel costs also threaten our recovery. A carbon tax would further slow our economic recovery and would take away job opportunities from the millions of Americans who lost their jobs due to the pandemic and subsequent shutdowns.
A carbon tax would effectively lower the incomes of Americans by making essential purchases more expensive while not actually reducing carbon emissions. Congress should instead take meaningful steps to encourage and promote innovation and the development of new technologies to mitigate the effects of climate change. This will encourage economic growth and actually make a difference in reducing our carbon emissions.
We thank Representative Scalise for his leadership and urge you to join him in opposing any form of a carbon tax.
Respectfully,
Hadley Heath Manning
Director of Policy
Independent Women’s Voice