NFIB State Director speaks out in a published op-ed.
The following opinion was published in LNP, the Lancaster News Post on May 22nd:
Gov. Wolf’s Pennsylvania Green New Deal Needs Reality Check
As Pennsylvania rolls toward budget crunch season, it’s interesting to note Governor Tom Wolf’s pivot toward radical environmental policies. A recent executive order by the Governor committed Pennsylvania as the 24th state in the US to join the U.S. Climate Alliance–essentially pledging to align our state’s policies with those of the Paris Climate Accord. The consequences of such a drastic reduction in emissions in such a short period of time will fall hard on Pennsylvania’s small businesses, on jobs, and the state economy.
A second back door push by the Wolf Administration is to move Pennsylvania into a carbon dioxide emissions Cap and Trade system through agency fiat, rather than through a vote of the General Assembly. DEP’s appointed Environmental Quality Board recently voted to move forward with consideration of such a plan. The stated goal is the elimination of all human-originated releases of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere.
In times when the details in Alexandria Ocasio Cortez’s dystopian Green New Deal are touted by elected officials who may have political or campaign goals, we see our Governor, Pennsylvania’s personally well-liked chief executive, wading into the muck. Perhaps it is a concession to the reality that his tax and spend agenda never got off the ground, and that on balance his views are not on par with most Pennsylvanians, including a sizeable percentage in his own party. His “fifth time’s a charm” Severance Tax hike proposal is taking on water, even as the strength of the national economy and its related benefits to our state government coffers resolve the structural imbalances that Wolf has used as the basis for broad-based tax hike proposals.
Members of both parties have a vested interested in clean air and clean water. Within the zone of making progress on such quality of life concerns, amazing advances have been made, and we can look forward to further advances in the years ahead. Mandating extreme environmental regulations with no regard to the cost or benefit to the public will crush businesses of all sizes and land with particular force on those small businesses which provide two-thirds of the jobs in our communities.
I’m sure these recent moves by our Governor will make him the toast of environmental lobbyists, but there are consequences for actions and costs to be borne. Hopefully, in reflective moments, Governor Wolf will weigh the negative impacts of his policies on jobs and job creators. Our small business owners and the people they employ must be given high priority as environmental policies are weighed in the balance.
Gordon Denlinger is the state director of NFIB in Pennsylvania, an association advocating on behalf of 12,500 small business members in the state.
