"Tax What We Burn, Not What We Earn"
 
Oakland-based policy institute Redefining Progress Foreshadows Gore's Approach
 
Oakland, CA –When former Vice President Al Gore announced that "This is the single most important policy change we can make," to a Washington, D.C. audience today, he could have been citing a Redefining Progress publication from April 1997. That publication, Tax Waste Not Work, proposed a shift in the current structure of taxing income to one that taxes waste and pollution.
 
Speaking of the transition away from dependence on fossil fuels, the former Vice President said, "Of course, we could and should speed up this transition by insisting that the price of carbon-based energy include the costs of the environmental damage it causes. I have long supported a sharp reduction in payroll taxes with the difference made up in CO2 taxes. We should tax what we burn, not what we earn. This is the single most important policy change we can make."
 
In a 2002 report, "Clean Energy and Clean Jobs," Redefining Progress staff James P. Barrett and J. Andrew Hoerner expanded upon this premise. Their comprehensive approach to climate change and energy, based on taxing greenhouse gas pollution and lowering payroll taxes, can serve as a roadmap towards the goals the Vice President challenged our country to achieve in his speech today.
 
"We've been advocating and educating policymakers for more than a decade as to why it is good economic policy to make polluters pay instead of taxing individuals," said Jim Barrett, Executive Director at Redefining Progress.
 
As long ago as 1997, Paul Krugman, Professor of Economics at MIT, wrote in his introduction to Tax Waste, Not Work, "In this monograph, we have a proposal that cuts across the normal ideological lines. It is pro-environment, but market-driven…This kind of new thinking deserves attention; perhaps now is the moment when it will get it."
 
Thanks to the efforts of the former Vice President, perhaps now it finally is the moment when we all will get it. Redefining Progress and the Environmental Justice and Climate Change Initiative are proud to be part of former Vice President Al Gore's We Campaign.
 
For more information on the Redefining Progress approach to taxing what we burn and not what we earn, contact James Barrett at 202-234-9665.
 
The report "Clean Energy and Jobs" is available at http://www.rprogress.org/publications/2002/Clean%20Energy%20and%20Jobs.pdf.
 
The executive summary to "Tax Waste, Not Work" can be found at http://www.rprogress.org/publications/1997/TaxWaste_sum.pdf
 
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