The Democrats zeal for raising your gas taxes by giving taxing powers to unelected regional bureaucrats is illegal in New Hampshire. Before they can attempt to do it (and they want to), they need to make it legal. SB610 is the enabling legislation.
Related: TCI is a “poorly conceived, fundamentally regressive, and economically damaging proposal”
The tax would be imposed as part of the Regional Transportation Climate initiative, or TCI. Sold as a tool for reducing vehicle ’emissions’ it’s actually just a regressive tax handed off to people who can’t be voted out of office.
It not only increases costs to families and job creators unnecessarily and puts a drag on our state economy, but it also handicaps what could be a huge boon for New Hampshire. By staying out of TCI and ensuring that it continues to be illegal to join, neighboring states that do jump down that hole will drive jobs and business toward New Hampshire.
Massachusetts needs the tax to pad their bloated budget. Vermont is a different governor away from leaping down the hole with Massachusetts. So, is New Hampshire, by the way. Without Gov. Sununu’s opposition, we’d already be in line to sign up.
Advocates will insist it is necessary to save the planet. But even it the climate cult was about that (it is not) Democrats can’t even run a city unless you mean to run it into the ground.
TCI is a carbon tax scheme like RGGI. Their promise is to “reduce dangerous greenhouse gases.” The impact is so minimal as to be pointless while the negative economic effects are significant. Hawaii is so #woke its government has to interfere to offset the impact of its interference through carbon taxes.
It’s a Democrat dream. Use state force to disrupt markets then use more force in an effort to “fix them.”
The CBO notes that (any)
“…carbon tax would increase the prices of fossil fuels in direct proportion to their carbon content. Higher fuel prices, in turn, would raise production costs and ultimately drive up prices for goods and services throughout the economy … Low-income households spend a larger share of their income on goods and services whose prices would increase the most, such as electricity and transportation.”
Everyone else loses buying power because free funds are being swallowed up as a cost of living increase that can only be offset by doing less living. Which is the point! But less “living” means less free capital available for every other part of the economy (in investment or in actual commerce) that would have benefited had the state not interfered.
Introducing a reverse carbon tax credit for lower income residents (as Hawaii is doing) would not stop the tax from eroding job opportunities or wage growth. The tax unnecessarily adds costs that put a brake on job creation, job retention, benefits, expansion, and more likely lead to fewer jobs and more unemployment.
Proponents of carbon taxes like TCI will then leap to solve the new problem they created by imposing more burdensome regulation and raising other taxes. All while their carbon tax does nothing to help the environment (even if it needed help).
Democrats destroy everything they touch. The Transportation Climate initiative touches everything.
The hearing is Tuesday, 02/18/2020, Room 103, LOB, 01:00 pm
