WASHINGTON — Apush by a group of senior Republican statesmen for a tax on carbon to help lessen the effects of climate change is already meeting entrenched opposition from within their own party.
Former Secretary of State James A. Baker 3rd went to the White House on Wednesday to gain Trump administration support for the plan, which would place a new tax on oil, natural gas and coal and then use the proceeds to pay quarterly dividends to American taxpayers. They said the payments would amount to about $2,000 total each year for families.
In addition to Baker, former Secretary of State George P. Shultz and other former officials from the Reagan and Bush administrations support the effort, billed as the Climate Leadership Council. Republicans, the group argued, need to take a leadership role on fighting climate change, a problem for which they said the evidence is growing too compelling to ignore.
A delegation led by Baker met Wednesday with White House chief of staff Reince Priebus, Trump adviser Kellyanne Conway and Gary Cohn, director of the National Economic Council. Baker also spoke briefly with Vice President Pence.
At his daily briefing on Tuesday, White House press secretary Sean Spicer declined to comment on whether Trump might consider supporting such a plan.
“We have nothing to announce on that,” Spicer said.
Speaking to reporters prior to the meeting, Baker conceded the group faces long odds for political success.
“This makes such good sense from a conservative, limited government, free market, pro-competitive approach, that at the very least we hope they’ll take a look at it,” Baker said. “But we know we have an uphill slog to get the Republicans interested in this.”
Within hours of their announcement, influential conservative antitax crusader Grover Norquist took to Twitter to suggest any proposal that includes a carbon tax is dead on arrival at Capitol Hill.
“Now that the GOP can repeal all the anti-energy, anti-job regs—the Left offers to trade those regs for a carbon tax,” tweeted Norquist, president of the group Americans for Tax Reform. “Nice try. No.”