In an interview this morning on C-SPAN’s “Washington Journal,” Rep. Nick Rahall (D-WV) claimed he didn’t vote for a carbon tax when he voted for the Progressive Caucus budget:
“Yeah, and if you read that Progressive budget, the vote that was on the floor of the House, there is no mention of her carbon tax. What I voted for in that Progressive budget was the revenues that would have been derived from incomes on the $250,000 and above income group in our country, the tax revenue that would have been derived from a tax on the upper income. That’s why I voted for the Progressive budget. Now I’m not for any carbon tax, make no mistake about it. I have voted against carbon taxes in the past. I’ve introduced the legislation saying no carbon tax. So, you now, out of 22,000-some votes I’ve cast in the Congress, John, it’s easy to find something that maybe can be interpreted to be in a bill in the after the fact documents that come out, such as happened on this Progressive budget vote. But I am not for a carbon tax, and make no mistake about it.”
However, according to The Washington Post, the Progressive Caucus budget did include a carbon tax:
“Investment on this scale will add trillions to the deficit. But the House Progressives have an answer for that: Higher taxes. About $4.2 trillion in higher taxes over the next decade, to be exact. The revenues come from raising marginal tax rates on high-income individuals and corporations, but also from closing a raft of deductions as well as adding a financial transactions tax and a carbon tax. They also set up a slew of super-high tax rates for the very rich, including a top rate of 49 percent on incomes over $1 billion.”
Watch Rahall claim he didn’t vote for a carbon tax, when he actually did, here: