Remember HB735, the New Hampshire Democrat’s carbon tax bill? It would suck hundreds of millions of dollars out of the state economy every year. Kill jobs. Hurt families. It’s not dead. It has been retained in committee. Which means it could come back to life without warning to kill our economy.
The new tax would hike the price you pay for gasoline, heating oil, propane, and electricity produced by coal, oil, gas, or wood. It’s a carbon tax. The point is to suppress consumption (and all the productivity that comes from it) on the mistaken notion that CO2 is the atmospheric equivalent of Donald Trump. It doesn’t matter what it does we have to stop it!
CO2 derangement syndrome (your breath is poison!) infects the entire Democrat party. But it is not having much success serving as a scapegoat to milk taxpayers for more government spending. Democrats in Maine have a similar bill. It was recently pulled back and converted to a study committee.
Even liberal Washington State rejected a carbon tax last year.
Rejection is a Tough Green Pill to Swallow
Failure at the federal level resulted in a multi-pronged push in state legislatures to pass carbon taxes. New Hampshire’s Plus-one scheme (we have a carbon tax already as part of RGGI) included a mechanism to redistribute 70% of the wealth extracted back to residents using some crazy formula and beginning with refunds to people in section 8 housing.
RGGI money is already refunded to taxpayers as a comprise to repealing our participation.
Maine is part of RGGI as well, though I’ve no idea what they do with the proceeds after the handling fee by its out-of-state, third-party, money launderer.
And none of this addresses the reality that CO2 is a trace gas essential to life on earth and far from the most meaningful “greenhouse gas” in our atmosphere. That would be water vapor.
No word on when the Democrats plan on releasing a bill to tax that. Until then, we need to keep our eye on HB735 while our Maine readers stay alert for any move by their new carbon tax study committee.
Photo by Jaroslav Devia on Unsplash
