Presumptive Democratic nominee Joe Biden will not pursue a carbon tax should he win the November election, according to a report, marking an about-face from an inference made at the Democratic National Convention this week.
The move, reported Thursday by Axios, is a major shift in the campaign’s position on the issue and comes as a result of the recession caused by the coronavirus pandemic.
During the Democratic primary, the former vice president said he was in favor of a tax on carbon emissions. Since then, the Democratic Party as a whole has moved away from the idea, given its potential to hamper economic recovery.
In his climate plan released last June, Biden called on Congress to develop an “enforcement mechanism” in order to cut carbon emissions. At the time, they argued that the mechanism needed was a carbon price.
In the wake of the coronavirus pandemic, however, Biden moved away from the more progressive position.
“I don’t think the campaign is going to push this,” one person familiar with the campaign’s thinking told Axios. “I think it’s almost always the right policy except in a recession or coming out of a recession.”
Despite the shift, Democratic National Committee officials added an amendment to the party platform in July that said, “Democrats support eliminating tax breaks and subsidies for fossil fuels, and will fight to defend and extend tax incentives for energy efficiency and clean energy.”
That amendment, according to the Huffington Post, was quietly removed from the final version of the party platform.
In a statement to the outlet, a DNC spokesperson said the amendment was “incorrectly included in the Manager’s Mark” and was taken out “after the error was discovered.”
John Laesch, a member of the DNC platform committee who sponsored the amendment, disputed their recounting of events, telling Politico he gave “no consent” for the language to be taken out of the platform and calling the party’s statement on the matter “100 percent false.”
Speaking to the outlet Wednesday, Laesch said the DNC had received permission from him and the campaigns of Biden and Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) to include the language.
“I definitively did not agree to drop my amendment and there was no misunderstanding,” he said.
He said that on the day of the vote for the Manager’s Mark, he was in constant contact with Sanders’ campaign.
According to Laesch, the Sanders campaign had asked him to drop the amendment because the DNC was prepared to scrap other climate provisions if he didn’t budge. He refused.
A Sanders campaign official told the outlet that Laesch initially gave reluctant agreement to pull the amendment, but later changed his mind.
“By that time he had changed his mind, it was too late,” the person said.
During Wednesday night’s convention festivities, Democrats pledged significant climate action during a roughly 15-minute segment that included a video montage focused on clean energy jobs.
The montage was narrated by Rob Bair, an electrical worker in a union in Pennsylvania, who said, “That’s Joe’s plan: create millions of new, good-paying jobs, many of them union jobs like mine.”
Bair continued by touting that Biden also planned to “invest in critical infrastructure, upgrade millions of buildings, invest in micromobility and precision agriculture, a clean energy future that achieves net-zero emissions by 2050.”
The Biden campaign did not respond to The Post’s request for comment on his stance on a carbon tax.