Editor’s note: Jon Margolis is VTDigger’s political columnist.
[T]his is not encouraging.
The campaign year has not yet begun, and already politics in Vermont is … well, for the sakes of both brevity and compassion, let’s just say it’s somewhere between not very impressive and downright depressing.
Take this business of the proposed carbon tax.
As is true of any proposal, its wisdom is open to debate. Its wisdom is a tougher sell if Vermont imposes a carbon tax of $10 a ton, rising over 10 years to $100 a ton, all by itself.
Which is what H. 412 would do. There is nothing in the bill, introduced by Democrats David Deen of Westminster and Mary Sullivan of Burlington with 25 co-sponsors, that requires Vermont to wait until any of its neighbors levies a similar charge before imposing the tax.
So the bill as written may be flawed. The gasoline tax would go up something like 8 or 9 cents a gallon in the first year, perhaps inspiring some Vermonters to toodle out of state to fill their tanks.
Flawed legislation, though, is no excuse for going bonkers, or even for gross oversimplification and mindless rhetoric.
The excess began shortly after it was reported that if fully implemented, the carbon tax would mean 88 cents a gallon in additional gasoline taxes.
True, but that’s after 10 years, and the bill calls for tax reductions and rebates to offset the additional costs of fuels. The sales tax, for instance, would have gone down $66.8 million a year by then.
Besides, an 88-cent increase in gasoline taxes does not equal an 88-cent increase in the price of gasoline. This is Economics 101. When the price of a product goes up, people use less of it, whereupon the price goes back down. In this case, probably not down by 88 cents, but perhaps down far enough that the higher gas price would be more than offset by the tax cuts for most Vermonters, who could end up with more money in their pockets.
But these details (or “the truth” as they are sometimes known) were immediately ignored. Republicans thought they saw an opening. Democrats were proposing to raise gasoline taxes.
“I’ve heard from many Vermonters who strongly oppose higher cost gasoline and home heating fuels,” Lt. Gov. (and Republican candidate for governor) Phil Scott said in a statement.
His primary opponent, Bruce Lisman, said the proposal “would make it more costly to live and do business in Vermont, further degrading our economy.”
And Republican State Chair David Sunderland went farther, calling the carbon tax idea “disgusting.”
Disgusting? Wow!
Generally a soft-spoken, civilized gentleman, Sunderland insisted that a policy which “completely overlooks and denies the affordability crisis Vermonters are facing is disgusting.”
But whether Vermont’s “affordability crisis” is more acute than any other state’s is questionable, as is Sunderland’s contention that the bill “overlooks and denies” the state’s economic problems; its backers think it’s an economic development measure.
Really, no policy proposal – well, in light of recent events, that has to be amended to say no policy proposal which does not call for discrimination against a race or religion – is disgusting. It may be foolish. It may be asinine. But not disgusting.
Especially when in this case the GOP critics addressed only the tax-increasing half of H.412, as though the tax-cutting sections did not exist. And especially when a great many prominent Republicans – former Treasury Secretary Hank Paulsen for one – support a revenue-neutral carbon tax on the national level. Clearly, this is not an outlandish idea. It is worth discussing.
It isn’t as though no one else has done it. In fact, a jurisdiction in North America has done it, though British Columbia is about as far from Vermont as any place in North America can be. The carbon tax and accompanying tax cuts have been in effect there since 2008. Since then, fossil fuel use per capita has declined by more than 17 percent while the province’s economy has kept pace with the rest of Canada.
British Columbia has seven times as many people as Vermont and almost 40 times more territory. Most BCers live hundreds of miles from a neighboring province, and while they are close to Washington state, going back and forth across an international border discourages popping across the line to fill the tank. There are no border guards on the Connecticut River.
Still, the experiment has succeeded there and can succeed elsewhere. But the British Columbia example goes unmentioned in Vermont.
As is their wont, Vermont Democrats responded to Republican simplistic demagoguery with craven cowardice.
Who, us? Raise the gasoline tax? Heaven forefend, was the message from many Democratic leaders.
The only co-sponsor of H. 412 who is running for statewide office, lieutenant governor candidate Kesha Ram, a House member from Burlington, was described as “walking back her support for the bill” in a report on Vermont Public Radio.
Ram, who has not withdrawn her name from the list of co-sponsors, said she did not intend to convey that message, but acknowledged that when she was asked flat out if she would vote for the bill as written right now, she said she would not.
Maybes that was the wrong answer. But it was also a pointless question, unless the intent was playing a “gotcha” game with the candidate.
There is nothing unusual about lawmakers introducing bills they wouldn’t vote for exactly as written. The language is usually a compromise among co-sponsors, and the goal at first is not to pass a bill but to start the process – to get the bill onto the agenda of a committee, which would hold hearings, consult experts, confer with various interest groups. By the time the bill got out of even one committee (and this one would need approval from a few in each house), it would look very different.
Perhaps most depressing is the disinclination – no, make that the refusal – of any elected official to state the obvious fact that if anything is going to be done about global warming, gasoline is going to have to cost more. Reducing the amount of greenhouse gas goop in the air means burning less oil, coal and gas. That can be accomplished by government fiat, with World War II-style rationing. Or it can be done using the market by making fossil fuels more expensive.
A carbon tax, in other words, is basically a Republican idea.
But it also seems politically poisonous. Economist Dick Heaps of Northern Economic Consulting, who favors a nationwide carbon tax but opposes Vermont going it alone, noted that “gasoline is one of those things that people know the price of,” even though it’s not very expensive. “though they have no idea what they pay for their cable service,” which is more costly.
It’s almost as though Americans – Vermonters included – believe they have an inherent right to cheap gasoline, when in fact, at today’s gas tax rates, every time anyone drives or rides in an automobile, he or she is being government-subsidized. A carbon tax would reduce that subsidy.
Whether Vermont should lead the way in imposing that tax is a challenging question. Maybe it could start by deciding to become the first state that stops lying about it.
