CTUP co-founder Steve Forbes sounds the alarms on – bipartisan, sadly – efforts afoot in Congress to lay the predicate for the U.S. matching European carbon taxes:

As written, the PROVE IT Act directs the Department of Energy (DOE) to collect data on the emissions intensity for the domestic and global production of a range of products, including steel, cement, glass, aluminum, and more. Data from several designated countries, including the U.S., would be gathered, analyzed and stored by federal bureaucrats…

A handful of GOP policymakers mistakenly claim the PROVE IT Act is a necessary data tool to protect large U.S. industries from foreign competitors. And despite promises to amend the bill to prevent its serving as a platform for new taxes, you can already hear the special interests pleading for tariffs based on selective data considerations. Hiding behind government-spun data and such words as “tariffs” won’t eliminate what these policymakers would be abetting: a costly, new national energy tax. And they shouldn’t think for a second that liberals won’t later work around any protective amendments to prevent the law from being used to enact a new tax.