PRESS RELEASE: Congressional Climate Solutions Caucus Betrays Republican Voters

Published October 8, 2018

ARLINGTON HEIGHTS, IL (October 8, 2018) – The Heartland Institute has published a Policy Brief extensively documenting the betrayal of Republican Party voters by the Congressional Climate Solutions Caucus (CSC).

Co-founded by liberal Republican Carlos Curbelo (R–FL), the CSC contains 90 members – 45 from each party – pledging support for “economically viable” options to restrict carbon dioxide. In reality, Curbelo and the Citizens’ Climate Lobby – the leftist activist group that gave birth to the CSC and that hosts the CSC’s website – support economy-crippling carbon dioxide taxes and far-left social justice warrior causes.

The Policy Brief, titled “The Congressional Climate Solutions Caucus: A Leftist Betrayal of Republican Voters,” reveals:

  • The Climate Solutions Caucus works hand-in-hand with the leftist Citizens’ Climate Lobby.
  • Any scheme to replace affordable conventional energy with expensive wind and solar power would severely punish American consumers and the American economy.
  • Republican CSC members generally represent the far-left wing of the Republican Party and vote against conservative principles more than half the time.
  • Joining the CSC will not win over any liberal voters but will demoralize and anger the conservative Republican Party base.

“Republican members of Congress who join the Climate Solutions Caucus are either deliberately or unwittingly selling out the Republican Party’s mainstream conservative voters and advancing the high-tax, big-government agenda of the environmental left,” observes Heartland Institute senior fellow James Taylor, author of the Policy Brief.

“The Caucus claims it supports ‘economically viable’ action to restrict carbon dioxide, but Caucus co-founder Carlos Curbelo and the Caucus’s founding body – the Citizens’ Climate Lobby – advocate expensive, economically punitive carbon-dioxide taxes,” Taylor noted. “For all the damage they inflict undermining the American economy and selling out Republican voters, Republicans who join the Caucus don’t even gain political benefits from doing so. The Climate Solutions Caucus is a lose-lose-lose proposition for Republican members of Congress.”

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