John Henke of The Next Right thinks Republicans are in a lose-lose situation on the cap and trade fight, “If the bill passes, they’ve lost a policy fight; if the bill fails, Republicans will not get credit for lower prices, but they will be blamed (fairly or not) for obstructing progress on environmental problems.” His solution:
What should Republicans do instead? Propose a carbon tax.
But, instead of a straight tax increase (as Democrats want), Republican should propose a carbon tax that replaces the payroll tax. That is revenue neutral, meaning there is no total tax increase.
All I can say is that I really, really, really wish that we were living in a world where there were a large bloc of Republicans willing to adopt this position in good faith. Then you’d have a situation where the strong climate advocates in the Democratic Party could negotiate with that bloc for a modified version of this approach. You’d have to make the math actually come out right rather than do an arbitrary tax-for-tax switch and I’d still want to see some complementary policies. But as Ezra Klein says the point is that when you have people arguing the policy merits in good faith then “you can try to compromise on the merits” and reach a result that’s much better than a compromise undertaken with people who are just acting as shake-down artists.
Sadly, I don’t think anyone is listening to Henke and the world will be a worse place for it.
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