As the Washington Post reported, American Solutions sent a letter today on behalf of our 55,000 members in Virginia to Gubernatorial candidates Creigh Deeds and Bob McDonnell calling on them to voice their opposition to the Waxman-Markey energy tax bill.
We've written extensively about how Waxman-Markey is a massive energy tax that would raise gas prices and kill jobs. The Heritage Foundation also conducted a detailed study demonstrating how costly the bill would actually be--and how little it would do for the environment.
With gas prices rising for 50 straight days, it's imperative we do everything we can to defeat this new energy tax.
Even though this is federal legislation, it's important for every candidate for elected office to go on the record and use their influence to defeat this bill. As we wrote in the letter:
As leaders who aspire to lead Virginia forward, you have a responsibility to speak out now to protect the Commonwealth from proposed laws that would kill jobs in Virginia. Your leadership responsibility is to help create Virginia jobs, not support their destruction (either actively or through silence), and the destruction of jobs in Virginia is exactly what the Waxman-Markey bill would cause.
You can read the full letter here.
UPDATE: Here is McDonnell's response to our letter. We will post Deeds' response as soon as we get it.
UPDATE2: Deeds fails to take a stand for Virginia jobs when asked by the Virginian-Pilot.
UPDATE3: For the second time, Deeds doesn't voice his opposition to new energy taxes.
James Madison, the fourth president wrote in Federalist paper #62, “It will be of little avail to the people…if the laws be so voluminous that they cannot be read or so incoherent that they cannot be understood.” Madison, one of the principal authors of the constitution practiced this simple but common sense concept. The entire constitution fits in my shirt pocket on 40 pages and can be understood by anyone capable of reading English.
Consider Congressman Henry Waxman’s 946 page behemoth climate bill which will plunder billions from taxpayers in the questionable name of global warming. Waxman admits he has not read this bill and when Republicans demanded it be read aloud to congress he hired a speed reader to blast it out at an auctioneers pace.
This stunt goes beyond contempt of the American people, the written words of our founders and the deliberative nature of the legislature. If this bill is truly in our best interests it should be shouted from the mountaintops and studied by all so that we may admire its genius. Its size, complexity and imprudent haste clearly indicate that it will be neither admirable nor a work of genius.