Biden’s New “Regressive” Methane Tax Will Raise Average American’s Gas Bill By 17%: Op-Ed
At a time when the Biden administration is panicking in an attempt to keep energy prices down, the House has slapped a “fee” on methane that is being called a “stealth tax” on natural gas and everyone who uses it.
The House bill results in an “escalating tax on methane emissions by oil and gas producers,” a new op-ed in the Wall Street Journal points out. The tax will hit $1,500 per ton by 2025 and the fee is supposed to be a contribution to recent promises made in Glasgow to curb methane emissions.
The cost of the fee will obviously get passed along to the consumer, which will then result in even higher energy prices than consumers are already struggling with. 180 million Americans use natural gas to hear their homes, the report says.
In the meantime, the Energy Information Administration (EIA) has come out and stated that half of U.S. households that heat with natural gas will pay 30% more than winter than they did last year. This methane tax could add another 17% to an average bill, the WSJ editorial board writes.
The WSJ op-ed board calls it a “regressive tax” and says that “Department of Energy notes the average energy burden for low-income families is three times higher than for more affluent households”.
The methane tax “exposes the contradiction at the heart of Democratic climate policy” and clearly violates President Biden’s promise not to raise taxes on those making less than $400,000 per year, the op-ed argues.
The op-ed concludes by arguing that once the methane tax is in place, it’ll be easy to raise over time. Combined with new methane regulations, it’ll continue to raise costs and introduce inefficiencies for producers.
The methane tax is “targeted, punitive and can be linked to higher consumer energy bills,” the op-ed concludes.
