![](https://www.atr.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/08/38962060760_5a29cd6c07_k-1280x720.jpg)
Tim Walz voted to impose radical cap-and-trade legislation as a member of congress in 2009. Walz said he was “very proud” to have voted for it.
See the Walz video of this statement here and below:
The 1,427-page bill passed the House with Walz’s support.
In another indication of Walz’s hard-left worldview, 44 House Democrats voted against the bill. Walz could have joined them in opposition but the supposed midwestern-everyman-coach-uncle Walz voted for it.
The bill eventually fell apart in the Senate. The U.S. dodged a bullet. The bill would have imposed an enormous tax increase, saddled households with significantly higher costs, created a vast government intrusion into the economy, and buried the U.S. in endless European-style climate red tape.
Had the bill become law it could have stifled the American fracking revolution and hurt natural gas production in Pennsylvania.
If Walz had his way, the U.S. might now be stuck in the same position as Europe: Hemmed-in by the climate bureaucracy and unable to secure energy independence, let alone energy dominance.
Walz Vote Details:
- Walz voted in favor of the “American Clean Energy and Security Act of 2009,” which would have imposed a national cap-and-trade system in the United States. The vote took place on June 26, 2009. when Walz was a member of the U.S. House. The bill narrowly passed, 219-212.
- A cap-and-trade system would have imposed an arbitrary government “cap” on the amount of carbon emissions a company is allowed to produce. American manufacturers would have had to purchase credits from Washington and then purchase additional credits from other factories if their business results in additional carbon emissions.
- Every American would have been hit with higher energy prices and higher prices on products that use energy inputs.
- A 2009 analysis from Americans for Tax Reform reported that implementation of the Walz-supported cap-and-trade bill would have increased taxes by $646 billion dollars over its first ten years, as noted in the Obama administration’s budget.
- Once fully phased in, the tax placed on Americans would have increased to $100 billion per year, or at least $1 trillion extrapolated over a period of ten years. The same analysis predicted an average $3,100 tax on every American family.
It is no wonder that left wing climate activist groups are praising the selection of Walz as Kamala Harris’s running mate:
“We applaud Vice President Harris for choosing a running mate who shares her commitment to acting on climate and know that together, Kamala Harris and Tim Walz will build on the Biden-Harris administration’s historic progress on climate, clean energy, environmental justice, conservation, democracy, and so much more,” wrote Tiernan Sittenfeld, SVP of government affairs at the League of Conservation Voters Action Fund.
Americans who have lived through the Biden-Harris administration’s skyrocketing energy prices, expensive electric vehicle mandates, attempts to restrict gas appliances, and support for energy tax increases know that the Harris-Walz ticket’s plan to “build on” those policies is bad news for the average household.