NH GOP Senate Candidate Takes Koch Pledge, Then Complains Can't Float "Bold Solutions"

He’s the only Republican running for Senate who mentions climate change on his website. He used to support a carbon tax, and actually talks about conservative climate change solutions. Then, Jim Rubens signed the Koch brothers’ pledge not to do anything about it.

The pledge, from the Koch-backed organization Americans For Prosperity (AFP), requires signers to “oppose any legislation relating to climate change that includes a net increase in government revenue.” That rules out a carbon tax, a policy that would make huge carbon cuts, create jobs, raise incomes, and improve the health of Americans. It’s also one of the few policies Congress could use to seriously fight climate change.

EDIT

In September, Rubens entered the race for the New Hampshire Republican Party’s nomination for U.S. Senate with a proposal for a revenue-neutral carbon tax, which would actually be acceptable under the pledge. He told the Concord Monitor in May that he had dropped that proposal because it was “dead on arrival.” According to his campaign website, his plan is now to end federal energy subsidies, for both fossil fuels ($72 billion) and renewable energy ($39 billion). Rubens says it’s both these sets of subsidies that are preventing renewables from taking off. Ending these subsidies would result in over $100 billion in savings for the federal government, which might run afoul of the Koch’s requirement that climate action not make the government money, depending on how he and the Kochs look at it.

EDIT

Rubens himself made the best case for why legislators shouldn’t tie their hands on climate action in an interview with Stephen Lacey of Greentech Media just last week. “If candidates are forbidden from proposing bold solutions, we’re going to be confined to stuff that’s already been discussed and has failed to achieve political traction,” he said.

EDIT/END

http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2014/06/24/3452603/rubens-koch-pledge/