Hagan campaign says she opposes carbon tax
Sen. Kay Hagan’s campaign said the North Carolina Democrat doesn’t support a carbon tax, despite a new advertising push that suggests she does.
“She opposes it (as evidenced by the act she voted against it),” Sadie Weiner, a spokeswoman for Hagan’s 2014 reelection effort, told The Hill in an email.
The statement comes after conservative energy group American Energy Alliance (AEA) began running radio ads across North Carolina slamming Hagan on the carbon tax issue.
In her response to The Hill, Weiner was referring to Hagan’s March vote against Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse’s (D-R.I.) amendment to the nonbinding Senate Democrat budget proposal.
That amendment, which failed 41-58, called for returning revenues from any fee on carbon pollution to the American public, such as through deficit reduction or lower tax rates.
The vote was largely symbolic, as the underlying bill was nonbinding. The Whitehouse amendment also didn’t exactly address the concept of carbon tax directly.
“Unlike the special interest outsiders trying to distort her record, Senator Hagan is standing up for North Carolina families and our state’s jobs each and every day,” Weiner said, calling the AEA ad, “misleading.”
The AEA, however, is focusing on a vote Hagan cast on a different amendment to the Senate Democrat budget plan.
She voted against a measure from Sen. Roy Blunt (R-Mo.) that called for blocking a carbon tax. That amendment garnered 53 supporters, but needed 60 to pass.
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