Tag: Inflation Reduction Act (IRA)

Why the PROVE IT Act Would Result in Carbon Taxes

The PROVE IT Act (S. 1863) is not a benign information collection bill on the carbon intensity of domestic and foreign goods. Instead, it would put in motion the creation of carbon taxes: a carbon tax on imported goods and a domestic carbon tax. It would also help the Biden administration as it works with the EU to impose carbon taxes on imported metals.

From ClimateRealism

Guest post by Daren Bakst

The PROVE IT Act (S. 1863) is not a benign information collection bill on the carbon intensity of domestic and foreign goods. Instead, it would put in motion the creation of carbon taxes: a carbon tax on imported goods and a domestic carbon tax. It would also help the Biden administration as it works with the EU to impose carbon taxes on imported metals. Here’s why:

  • Congress has already demonstrated what will happen with PROVE IT Act information. Just over a year ago in the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), which was a partisan reconciliation bill, Congress took information collected under the EPA’s greenhouse gas reporting program  to create a methane tax. The Senate passed the IRA on a 51-50 party-line vote with Vice President Kamala Harris casting the tiebreaker.
  • Many bill supporters have shown they would replicate what happened with the methane tax. In the Senate EPW Committee markup of the bill, all Committee Democrats voted to kill an amendment that would have helped block the future use of reconciliation to impose a carbon tax on imported goods or a domestic carbon tax based on PROVE IT Act information. Chairman Tom Carper (D-DE) opposed the amendment precisely because it “prohibits any revenue measure based on the greenhouse gas emissions associated with commodities or products.”
  • When PROVE IT Act supporters argue the bill is a way to hold foreign countries accountable, they reveal that the legislation is about more than information. Supporters, including lead sponsors Sens. Kevin Cramer (R-ND) and Chris Coons (D-DE), have argued that the PROVE IT Act is a way to hold other countries accountable for their emissions. Merely providing information cannot hold any country accountable. Their arguments are a tacit admission that the bill will be used to impose carbon taxes on imports, at a minimum.
  • Bill supporters openly acknowledge that the PROVE IT Act is intended to lead to more taxes. Many of the bill supporters are expressly admitting that the legislation will mean carbon taxes of some kind. Sen. Coons (D-DE) has said about the bill, “figuring out a fair process for imposing tariffs on countries that don’t have any transparency around their emissions is also going to be a complex part of any border carbon adjustment mechanism.” The European Union (EU) has created the first and only carbon border adjustment mechanism (CBAM) and it includes both a carbon tax on imports and a domestic carbon pricing scheme. Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) has said the bill will “help us construct a carbon border adjustment of our own.” Since 2021, about half of the sponsors of the PROVE IT Act have sponsored bills imposing carbon taxes on imports, with many of these bills also imposing domestic carbon taxes. Senator Coons, a lead sponsor of the PROVE IT Act and two co-sponsors, Sens. Whitehouse and Martin Heinrich (D-NM), sponsored the Clean Competition Act, which uses carbon intensity data to impose carbon taxes on imported goods and a domestic carbon tax.
  • The bill helps to collaborate with the EU on its harmful climate policy. Senator Cramer has repeatedly argued for working with the EU on climate policy. He wrote: “We have an opportunity to counter Putin’s playbook with a bold initiative consistent with European priorities… One aspect of that initiative could be a joint trade mechanism between the United States and the European Union that levels a common carbon fee on imported goods.” Instead of fighting and rejecting the EU’s disastrous climate policy, the PROVE IT Act embraces what the EU is doing. Many supporters advocate for a CBAM similar to the EU’s, and seek to create a “carbon club” of countries that join together to impose carbon taxes in some fashion.
  • The PROVE IT Act will help the Biden administration in its negotiations with the EU to tax the carbon intensity of metals. The Biden administration and EU are working on the Global Arrangement on Sustainable Steel and Aluminum that would impose taxes on imported metals based on their carbon intensity. This is part of the Biden administration’s broader plan as USTR explains to “use trade tools to decarbonize our economies.” The PROVE IT Act would legitimize these efforts and help the Biden administration reach an agreement with the EU on carbon taxes by pointing to this domestic effort to develop carbon taxes. It would also provide the Biden administration the data necessary to try and unilaterally impose carbon taxes on imports, such as under Section 232 of the Trade Expansion Action of 1974.
  • Creating a carbon tax on imported goods leads inexorably to a domestic carbon tax.1) To be part of a “carbon club” with the EU, as many bill supporters want, the US would logically need to have a system like the EU CBAM that includes a domestic carbon pricing mechanism. Not surprisingly, the PROVE IT Act helps to create the framework to implement an EU-type system.2) The US would sooner or later impose a domestic carbon tax if it imposes a carbon tax on imports. This is not simply due to trade law obligations but also because environmental groups and others would not stay silent as domestic industries failed to meet similar greenhouse gas reduction commitments.3) The PROVE IT Act is a way to build a lobby for a carbon tax on imports that can then be used to secure a domestic carbon tax. Domestic manufacturers would oppose a domestic carbon tax absent a corresponding tax on imports to “level the playing field.” Therefore, the PROVE IT Act is a political solution for domestic carbon tax supporters: The bill will lead to carbon taxes on imports, which will lead to a domestic carbon tax.

Bottom line

The PROVE IT Act would make carbon taxes a reality. If legislators genuinely oppose carbon taxes, then why even take the risk of facilitating their enactment and implementation by building the administrative framework and lobbying base for such taxes? And this would be a huge risk given that many bill supporters would use the reconciliation process to impose carbon taxes once they have the PROVE IT Act information.

Biden’s EPA Massively Stepped Up Its ‘Environmental Justice’ Agenda In 2023

The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) intensified its “environmental justice” agenda in 2023 in terms of enforcement and grantmaking.

From The Daily Caller

NICK POPE

CONTRIBUTOR

  • President Joe Biden’s Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) significantly scaled up its enforcement and grantmaking activities related to environmental justice in 2023.
  • The EPA’s 2023 enforcement statistics show that the agency increased its inspections in areas of potential environmental justice concern and that the dollar amount of judicial and administrative penalties assessed in such areas also reached recent highs.
  • “EPA-funded researchers dredge reams of data to find a few trivial environmental differences between rich and poor communities and then blame the inconsequential differences on racism,” Steve Milloy, a senior legal fellow for the Energy and Environmental Legal Institute and a member of the Trump EPA transition team, told the DCNF.

The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) intensified its “environmental justice” agenda in 2023 in terms of enforcement and grantmaking.

EPA Administrator Michael Regan said in May 2023 that the agency has “built environmental justice into [its] very DNA,” and over the course of the year the agency significantly increased enforcement in specific areas across the country, while handing out hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars to environmentalist groups to pursue environmental justice projects. These developments reflect a broader effort by the EPA and Biden administration to infuse social justice ideology into bureaucratic functions, and a strategy to build political patronage by funding activist organizations with taxpayer dollars, experts told the DCNF.

“From day one, President Biden and EPA have been committed to delivering progress on environmental justice and civil rights, and ensuring that underserved and overburdened communities are at the forefront of our work,” an EPA spokeswoman told the DCNF. “The agency is ensuring that people who’ve struggled to have their concerns addressed see action to solve the problems they’ve been facing for generations. These efforts to integrate EJ and equity into all of EPA’s work is seen through the work of the Office of Enforcement and Compliance in its enforcement of environmental laws.” (RELATED: Shortlist For EPA’s Multi-Billion Dollar ‘Green’ Fund Features Groups With Deep Connections To Biden Admin, Dems)

In fiscal year 2023, more than 60% of federal inspections occurred in areas of potential environmental justice concern, reflecting a significant increase in both the total number and relative proportion of civil enforcement case conclusions in such areas compared to years past, the EPA enforcement data shows.

The estimated amount of pollution — measured in pounds — reduced, treated or eliminated by the EPA in potential environmental justice concern areas was lower in fiscal year 2023 than in fiscal year 2021, according to the EPA enforcement data. The 41.18 million pounds that the EPA estimates it handled in such areas amounts to less than one-third of the 137.84 million pounds that the Trump EPA recorded in fiscal year 2019.

While the amount of pollution that the EPA estimates it reduced, treated or eliminated was not exceptionally high, the agency’s actions resulted in an estimated $69.15 million worth of administrative and judicial penalties assessed in areas of environmental justice concern in fiscal year 2023, a number that is far greater than any figure recorded since fiscal year 2014, according to the enforcement statistics.

The EPA asserts that environmental justice can only be achieved when “everyone enjoys the same degree of protection from environmental and health hazards, and equal access to the decision-making process to have a healthy environment in which to live, learn and work.”

The Biden administration “wants to say that pollution is racist, in the same way that they want to say education is racist,” Mandy Gunasekara, who served as EPA chief of staff during the Trump administration, told the DCNF. “They are using this as a political tool that is not supported by legal precedent … The problem with this administration is that they lack a balance in their mission; they just want to grab headlines, and to grab headlines you need extremes, and one of the easiest ways to do that is via environmental justice, as we have seen. It’s the ultimate weaponization of industrial action.”

The EPA’s environmental justice agenda is part of a broader push by the White House, which sees the concept as key to “confronting longstanding environmental injustices” endured primarily by “marginalized, underserved and overburdened communities.”

“EPA-funded researchers dredge reams of data to find a few trivial environmental differences between rich and poor communities and then blame the inconsequential differences on racism,” Steve Milloy, a senior legal fellow for the Energy and Environmental Legal Institute and a member of the Trump EPA transition team, told the DCNF. “If minority communities suffer from anything, it’s poverty. Ironically, poverty is caused by EJ policies that ban manufacturing facilities and kill good-paying industry jobs.” (RELATED: EPA Bureaucrats Can Rake In Six-Figure Salaries While Mostly Working From Home, Report Finds)

In addition to the enforcement aspect of EPA’s work on environmental justice, the agency has massive amounts of taxpayer dollars at its disposal to give to activist organizations that engage in their own environmental justice initiatives.

In December 2023, the EPA named the recipients of a combined $600 million in grants for environmental justice pursuits. Among the awardees were explicitly left-wing activist groups and incubators such as the Climate Justice Alliance and The Minneapolis Foundation, as well as Social and Environmental Entrepreneurs, which facilitates de facto get-out-the-vote efforts.

The money came from the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), President Joe Biden’s signature climate bill.

In April 2023, the agency shelled out a combined $177 million to a range of environmental groups to serve as “Environmental Justice Thriving Communities Technical Assistance Centers.” Some of those recipients, such as WE ACT for Environmental Justice and the Deep South Center for Environmental Justice, had previously supported the Biden administration’s climate agenda.

Under Biden, the agency’s environmental justice grantmaking has essentially served as a “political tool” that is “used to fund activism of the left,” Gunasekara told the DCNF. “That’s what this administration is using environmental justice for, and it is really unfortunate because it degrades the way that environmental justice is considered in the administration … The communities that really need EPA’s help, they don’t need more activists.”

In addition to the more than $700 million in environmental justice grants that the agency distributed in 2023, the EPA is also gearing up to hand out approximately $2 billion in so-called “community change grants.” The program, also endowed by the IRA, is “designed to deliver on the transformative potential of the IRA for communities most adversely and disproportionately impacted by climate change, legacy pollution and historical disinvestments,” according to the agency’s website.

“During 2024, environmental justice will be a means for the Biden administration to funnel money to poor communities for election purposes,” Milloy told the DCNF.

The White House did not respond to a request for comment.

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