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EPW Fact of the Day: Clinton, Obama Sign Onto to Boxer’s $4,500 Climate Tax on American Families
May 9, 2007

Posted by Marc Morano - Marc_Morano@epw.Senate.Gov - 1:34 PM ET
 
Senate Environment & Public Works Chairman Barbara Boxer (D-CA) and Senator Bernie Sanders (I-VT) have proposed the "Global Warming Pollution Reduction Act" aimed at combating climate change. The proposed partisan bill (S.309) is supported by another 15 senators, including: Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-NY); Sen. Barack Obama (D-IL); Sen. Christopher J. Dodd (D-CT); Sen. Joseph R. Biden (D-DE); Sen. Daniel K. Akaka (D-HI); Sen. Russell D. Feingold (D-WI); Sen. Daniel K. Inouye (D-HI); Sen. Edward M. Kennedy (D-MA); Sen. Frank R. Lautenberg (D-NJ); Sen. Patrick J. Leahy (D-VT); Sen. Robert Menendez (D-NJ); Sen. Jack Reed (D-RI); Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI); Sen. Barbara A. Mikulski (D-MD), and Sen. Benjamin L. Cardin (D-MD).

FACT: A new MIT study concludes that the Sanders-Boxer approach would impose a tax-equivalent of $366 billion annually, or more than $4,500 per family of four, by 2015. And the annual costs will grow after 2015. [Read full MIT study] 

The Kyoto Protocol would have imposed an equivalent tax of $300 billion a year, 10 times the size of the Clinton-Gore tax increase of 1993. In addition to the MIT study, a new Congressional Budget Office study released recently, details how a carbon cap-and-trade system would result in massive wealth redistribution from the poor and working class to wealthier Americans. [Read more on CBO study]

Senator James Inhofe (R-Okla.), EPW Ranking Member, said today:

"Carbon caps would artificially and needlessly raise the cost of energy the most on the people least able to afford it. It astounds me that any Senator could support such a proposal."

Read Senator Inhofe's full opening statement from today's EPW subcommittee hearing [Link]  

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