Sponsors (26)
The bill channels large, dedicated fees on fossil-fuel activities into guaranteed, equitable resilience and preparedness spending and preserves local legal and regulatory authority — at the cost of higher taxes/fees and energy prices for consumers, increased federal spending mandates, and added legal and administrative complexity.
Communities nationwide — especially those facing frequent climate harms — will get a large, dedicated Polluters Pay Climate Fund (financed by fossil-fuel-related charges) that meaningfully expands financing for adaptation and resilience projects, reducing future disaster repair costs.
Low-income, frontline, and historically overburdened communities will receive prioritized investment (at least 40% of annual Fund investments) and targeted grants/technical assistance to reduce disproportionate climate harms and improve local resilience.
State and local disaster preparedness and resilient infrastructure programs receive guaranteed, substantial annual funding (including specified minimums to FEMA, BRIC, and EPA programs), improving national response capacity and infrastructure resilience.
Households and businesses nationwide face higher energy and consumer prices because the collective $100 billion/year assessment on fossil-fuel firms and new greenhouse-gas taxes are likely to be passed through to consumers.
New tax liabilities on greenhouse-gas stock and rules disallowing deductions raise costs for firms (and indirectly for consumers), increasing operating expenses for emitting businesses and potentially slowing economic activity in affected sectors.
The Act creates large mandatory spending commitments and directed minimum allocations that may require higher taxes, more borrowing, or reallocation away from other programs, and that reduce Congress's short-term budgetary flexibility.
Based on analysis of 6 sections of legislative text.
Creates a tax-funded federal trust to collect payments tied to greenhouse gas stocks and direct funds to resilience, disaster response, and environmental justice programs.
Creates a federal trust called the Polluters Pay Climate Fund that collects taxes tied to the current stock of greenhouse gas emissions and uses the money—subject to annual appropriations—for climate resilience, adaptation, disaster response, and environmental justice investments. The bill directs large, specified minimum annual distributions to FEMA disaster response and resilience programs and to climate grant programs, requires 40% of funds to benefit environmental justice communities, and preserves existing state and private legal claims against fossil fuel actors.
Introduced February 7, 2025 by Jerrold Lewis Nadler · Last progress February 7, 2025