A new ad from the PA Chamber of Business and Industry is taking aim at Gov. Tom Wolf’s new energy tax proposal.
Wolf has been pushing for the implementation of a severance tax on the natural gas industry – at five percent – to fund other areas, such as education.
The spot says Wolf’s plan “could cost tens of thousands of jobs and billions in job-creating investments” in the state. “And even worse, the money would be sent to Harrisburg, instead of critical local projects.”
Wolf and proponents of the severance tax believe that more than $1 billion could be raised to save important government functions such as the Department of Environmental Protection and education funding, while also allowing for property tax relief.
The ad says the tax would be “the highest energy tax in the country,” a claim fact-checked by StateImpactPA.
The Chamber is campaigning against the new taxes, as the natural gas industry has been “the biggest engine of prosperity that Pennsylvania has seen in decades.”
The state legislature and Wolf are required to pass a budget by June 30th.
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4 Responses
Pennsylvanians are already paying extraction taxes for gas coming into PA from other states. Eventually foreign buyers will be paying the extraction tax for gas exported from PA, so get over it drillers.
The motherlode of natural gas is here in the Marcellus Shale!! Who are we kidding? Raise taxes twice that high and see who stays or goes. We need to fund the emminent toxic clean-up our children will be left with, leaking wells into our water supplies, funding to restore what is/was most unique to Pa.fouled pristine streams, redoing poor erosion control projects and ultimately facing illnesses brought to us by all the dirty fossil fuel industry.
We need tax money to develop and support sustainable jobs in renewable energy. Bring on the solar spill, which is not, a methane leaking 24/7 gas pipeline or a Philly refinery bound oil train explosion, but a nice day.
If the DEP was properly funded to test the drilling pollution, they’d have to shut down the whole industry.
Education money from the taxes would go to local schools, not spent in Harrisburg.
I’m sure Givernor McGinty and the rest of Wolf’s brood pf pup(pets) sure are happy he sent that infantile dispatch to the Chamber. Really beneath anyone pretending to be anything but a tempestuous dictator.