Daily on Energy: Sheldon Whitehouse Says Carbon Pricing Is 'Highly Likely' for Democratic Spending Package
In a recent interview, Senator Sheldon Whitehouse talks about using RFF analysis to pitch the Biden administration on exempting gasoline from a carbon tax.
To ensure a carbon price doesn't violate President Joe Biden's pledge to not raise taxes on people making less than $400,000 a year, Whitehouse said he's pitched the administration on exempting gasoline from the tax.
He presented administration officials a study from Resources for the Future showing emissions reductions for a carbon tax with and without an exemption for gasoline are relatively similar (basically because people would be unlikely anyway to stop driving their gasoline-powered vehicles or switch to EVs just because of a slight increase in gas prices caused by a carbon tax).
"It turns out by taking unleaded gas out you lose very little on the emissions side and may gain a great deal of public acceptance," Whitehouse told me in a separate follow-up interview after we stopped recording.
