Jay Inslee is debuting his plan for driving up energy costs for all Washington taxpayers today in a meeting of his task force on carbon emissions. The meeting is being hosted by one of the $1 million donors to Inslee’s last campaign, a local of the Service Employees International Union (SEIU).
Inslee quietly posted the materials for the meeting, to help ensure that the public would be unaware of his plans. This has been the normal practice of his secretive task force.
A quick review of Inslee’s cap and trade plan – which failed to pass Congress when Inslee was in the “other Washington” – shows that he has not lost his appetite for an extreme program that allows his office to pick economic winners and losers.
He also has not lost his nerve about driving up gas prices across Washington State, even after Shift exposed his plan in the spring. After being caught, Inslee denied on KIRO radio that his gas tax scheme was going to raise gas prices by “a buck a gallon”. Now he is suggesting that his extreme carbon reduction program will increase costs in the magnitude of “10 to 40 cents a gallon”, though he doesn’t explain what he will do differently to avoid the $1-plus gas tax increase predicted earlier this year by a consultant he hired.
Inslee also admits in the materials for today’s meeting that he won’t be satisfied with just driving up fuel costs with his gas tax scheme (formerly called a Lower Carbon Fuel Standard (LCFS), but since renamed) – he also must have his beloved cap and trade program.
He outlines his plan by first asking “Are both cap-and-trade and a Clean Fuels Standard needed?” and then answering “Cap-and-trade and a Clean Fuels Standard work together.”
Only in Inslee’s extreme environmental agenda does it make sense to sock Washington taxpayers with both failed programs at once.
He must be part of team insanity …. redoing the same thing until it makes sense.
and none of these polititians tell you how stealing this money from the taxpayers will be spent or how it could possibly change climate change.
I love being a Republican! I can stick my head in the sand and ignore science and prevent that clean water is a gift from God that we never have to worry about. I can also hate my grandkids and not care whether they can breathe clean air, or have food to eat.