Formation | 1975 |
---|---|
Founder | Charls Walker |
Founded at | Washington, DC |
52-0991278 [1] | |
Purpose | capital gains tax reduction |
Headquarters | Washington, D.C. |
President | Mark A. Bloomfield |
Executive Vice President and Chief Economist | Pinar Cebi Wilber |
Website | http://accf.org/ |
The American Council for Capital Formation (ACCF) is an American think tank founded in 1975 by Charls Walker. [2] It is located on the District of Columbia's Connecticut Avenue. [3] Mark Bloomfeld serves as its president and Pinar Cebi Wilber [4] serves as its executive vice president and chief economist.
The group lobbied for the Revenue Act of 1978, which cut capital gains taxes. The council supports ending the ban on crude oil exports and a flexible approach to the regulation of greenhouse gases. The council describes itself as nonpartisan, [5] while journalists generally describe its positions as "free market" [6] [7] or "pro-business." [8] [9]
The council was founded in 1975 as the American Council on Capital Gains and Estate Taxation. Charls Walker founded the council and acted as its first chairman. Seed money for the Council was provided by the Weyerhaeuser Company, a logging concern, and the National Forest Products Association; timber firms were at that time particularly affected by the capital gains tax. [10]
In 1978, Democratic President Jimmy Carter announced his intention to pass tax reform legislation. That year, the ACCF set up a meeting between William A. Steiger, a Wisconsin congressman, and Ed Zschau, an electronics entrepreneur from California. Persuaded by Zschau's case that the doubling of capital gains taxes between 1969 and 1976 had badly hurt his industry, Steiger put legislation in motion to reset the tax to 1968 levels. The ACCF spoke in support Steiger's measure. [11]
Carter opposed the measure, but by mid-1978 realized that he lacked the political support to defeat it, given widespread popular anger at high taxes and broad support by both parties. [12] The tax cut bill (the Revenue Act of 1978) passed the House of Representatives by a vote of 362-49 [13] and was signed into law by President Carter. [12]
Analyzing the Revenue Act in his 2008 book The Rise of the Counter-establishment, Democratic activist Sidney Blumenthal was sharply critical of the act, arguing that the bill created no actual growth. Walker argued at the time that the bill had spared the economy from a sharper downturn, and reflected a new bipartisan consensus in favor of capital formation: "'You put the question this way: Do you think that American business is putting enough money into new machinery? And they say no. There it is.'" [14]
The council supported ending the ban on export of crude oil from the United States. Margo Thorning of the ACCF said in response to the refusal of President Barack Obama's administration to lift the ban: "The world has changed tremendously since the ban on crude oil exports was put in place over 40 years ago. That is nowhere more evident than in the transformation of our nation's energy landscape from one of scarcity to one of abundance." [15] The Council hosted two policy briefings on Capitol Hill against the crude oil export ban in 2015 - one in May with Senator John Hoeven and the other in November with Senator Cory Gardner. [16]
The council's position on climate change is that "because energy use and economic growth go hand in hand, policymakers should develop a flexible, long-term approach to reducing the growth of greenhouse gases. This requires a global effort based on technological innovation and technology transfer to developing countries where greenhouse gas emissions growth is most rapid." [17]
While the ACCF is skeptical of climate policies and regulations that impose significant costs on the U.S. economy, the Council does not reject climate-related science. ACCF economist Margo Thorning supported the Energy Tax Prevention Act in 2011 and 2012. This bill would have reversed a Supreme Court ruling that the Environmental Protection Agency has authority to regulate greenhouse gas emissions. In Congressional testimony, Thorning stated that the regulation of greenhouse gases "makes little economic or environmental sense." [18] In 2015, the ACCF joined with an alliance of oil lobbyists and environmental groups to oppose the federal ethanol mandate. [7] In 2017, ACCF’s Vice President of Policy and General Counsel, Timothy M. Doyle released a paper criticizing New York City's decision to divest $5 billion of its pension fund from fossil fuels. [19]
The council also disagrees with policies that would restrict the export of fossil energy. In 2015, Banks wrote, "Some people, particularly environmentalists, will claim that the United States should not export fossil energy because of climate mitigation concerns. While climate change is a problem that the world needs to address, cutting off U.S. exports of fossil fuels is not the answer. In fact, pursuing such an action only reduces the amount of affordable and reliable energy available to global markets for economic development and poverty eradication efforts, increasing the scarcity of energy resources and worsening related competition between nation states." [20]
In 2018, Timothy M. Doyle, Vice President of Policy and General Counsel of the ACCF, released a report criticizing the growing role of proxy advisers in finance and supporting bipartisan legislation requiring them to register with the Securities and Exchange Commission and disclose conflicts of interest. [21]
Charls Walker was the council's first chairman. He served the administration of President Richard M. Nixon as undersecretary of the treasury from 1969 to 1972 and as deputy secretary of the same department in 1973 under John Connally. [22] Walker started consulting after leaving the Nixon administration. [23]
Mark A. Bloomfield is the president and CEO of the council. [24] [25] After working on Ronald Reagan's first presidential campaign, Bloomfield became involved with ACCF after meeting Charls Walker while working as an aide on the House Ways and Means Committee. [25] Walker and Bloomfield later co-authored the book Intellectual Property Rights and Capital Formation in the Next Decade (University Press of America, 1988). [26] Bloomfield is known for the monthly dinners he holds for members of Congress, business leaders, and journalists. Senator Joseph Lieberman called them "Washington's last salon", and Senator John E. Sununu stated that they gave politicians from opposing parties a chance to meet and have "substantive discussions". [25]
Pinar Çebi Wilber is Executive Vice President and Chief Economist with the American Council for Capital Formation. [27] She is also an adjunct professor in the Department of Economics at Georgetown University. [28] Before joining the organization, Wilber was a visiting Assistant Professor at Washington and Lee University. She has a Ph.D. in economics from Georgetown University and a BA from Bilkent University, Turkey. [29] Wilber has conducted research in the areas of energy policy, tax policy, international trade and finance, and general government policy, especially as it relates to the effect of government policies on retirement saving and the use of annuities in retirement. [30]
In 2021, ACCF announced that former Congressman Bill Flores (R-TX) [31] and former Senator Mark Pryor (D-AR) [32] would join its board of directors.
George "David" Banks served as executive vice president at the ACCF. [33] Before his position at ACCF, Banks was a senior adviser to President George W. Bush on international climate change [34] and then a deputy director of the nuclear energy program at the Center for Strategic & International Studies. [35] In 2017, he served as Special Assistant for International Energy and Environment at the National Economic and National Security Councils in the administration of President Donald Trump. [36]
At ACCF, Banks has been a strong advocate for energy free trade and constructive U.S. engagement with China. "China-bashing in the context of U.S. energy policymaking will only cause Beijing to become more stubborn in the South China Sea and more aggressive in locking up energy supplies around the globe,” he wrote in November 2015. [37] He has also been critical of the Renewable Fuel Standard (RFS), writing in The Washington Times in February 2016 that "The RFS has plagued the country for years by jacking up food and fuel costs. What’s more, it’s outdated and offers zero environmental benefits. Congress should nix this standard before it wreaks more havoc on the country." [38]
In 2018, Banks spoke in support of the Paris climate agreement, calling it "a good Republican agreement". [36]
A fossil fuel is a hydrocarbon-containing material such as coal, oil, and natural gas, formed naturally in the Earth's crust from the remains of dead plants and animals that is extracted and burned as a fuel. Fossil fuels may be burned to provide heat for use directly, to power engines, or to generate electricity. Some fossil fuels are refined into derivatives such as kerosene, gasoline and propane before burning. The origin of fossil fuels is the anaerobic decomposition of buried dead organisms, containing organic molecules created by photosynthesis. The conversion from these materials to high-carbon fossil fuels typically require a geological process of millions of years.
A carbon tax is a tax levied on the carbon emissions required to produce goods and services. Carbon taxes are intended to make visible the "hidden" social costs of carbon emissions, which are otherwise felt only in indirect ways like more severe weather events. In this way, they are designed to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by increasing prices of the fossil fuels that emit them when burned. This both decreases demand for goods and services that produce high emissions and incentivizes making them less carbon-intensive. In its simplest form, a carbon tax covers only CO2 emissions; however, it could also cover other greenhouse gases, such as methane or nitrous oxide, by taxing such emissions based on their CO2-equivalent global warming potential. When a hydrocarbon fuel such as coal, petroleum, or natural gas is burned, most or all of its carbon is converted to CO2. Greenhouse gas emissions cause climate change, which damages the environment and human health. This negative externality can be reduced by taxing carbon content at any point in the product cycle. Carbon taxes are thus a type of Pigovian tax.
The American Petroleum Institute (API) is the largest U.S. trade association for the oil and natural gas industry. It claims to represent nearly 600 corporations involved in production, refinement, distribution, and many other aspects of the petroleum industry.
The Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers (CAPP), with its head office in Calgary, Alberta, is a lobby group that represents the upstream Canadian oil and natural gas industry. CAPP's members produce "90% of Canada's natural gas and crude oil" and "are an important part of a national industry with revenues of about $100 billion-a-year ."
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The Energy Policy and Conservation Act of 1975 (EPCA) is a United States Act of Congress that responded to the 1973 oil crisis by creating a comprehensive approach to federal energy policy. The primary goals of EPCA are to increase energy production and supply, reduce energy demand, provide energy efficiency, and give the executive branch additional powers to respond to disruptions in energy supply. Most notably, EPCA established the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, the Energy Conservation Program for Consumer Products, and Corporate Average Fuel Economy regulations.
The energy policy of the European Union focuses on energy security, sustainability, and integrating the energy markets of member states. An increasingly important part of it is climate policy. A key energy policy adopted in 2009 is the 20/20/20 objectives, binding for all EU Member States. The target involved increasing the share of renewable energy in its final energy use to 20%, reduce greenhouse gases by 20% and increase energy efficiency by 20%. After this target was met, new targets for 2030 were set at a 55% reduction of greenhouse gas emissions by 2030 as part of the European Green Deal. After the Russian invasion of Ukraine, the EU's energy policy turned more towards energy security in their REPowerEU policy package, which boosts both renewable deployment and fossil fuel infrastructure for alternative suppliers.
United States energy independence is the concept of eliminating or substantially reducing import of petroleum to satisfy the nation's need for energy. Some proposals for achieving energy independence would permit imports from the neighboring nations of Canada and Mexico, in which case it would be called North American energy independence. Energy independence is espoused by those who want to leave the US unaffected by global energy supply disruptions and would restrict reliance upon politically unstable states for its energy security.
The energy policy of Australia is subject to the regulatory and fiscal influence of all three levels of government in Australia, although only the State and Federal levels determine policy for primary industries such as coal. Federal policies for energy in Australia continue to support the coal mining and natural gas industries through subsidies for fossil fuel use and production. Australia is the 10th most coal-dependent country in the world. Coal and natural gas, along with oil-based products, are currently the primary sources of Australian energy usage and the coal industry produces over 30% of Australia's total greenhouse gas emissions. In 2018 Australia was the 8th highest emitter of greenhouse gases per capita in the world.
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The United States produced 5.2 billion metric tons of carbon dioxide equivalent greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions in 2020, the second largest in the world after greenhouse gas emissions by China and among the countries with the highest greenhouse gas emissions per person. In 2019 China is estimated to have emitted 27% of world GHG, followed by the United States with 11%, then India with 6.6%. In total the United States has emitted a quarter of world GHG, more than any other country. Annual emissions are over 15 tons per person and, amongst the top eight emitters, is the highest country by greenhouse gas emissions per person. However, the IEA estimates that the richest decile in the US emits over 55 tonnes of CO2 per capita each year. Because coal-fired power stations are gradually shutting down, in the 2010s emissions from electricity generation fell to second place behind transportation which is now the largest single source. In 2020, 27% of the GHG emissions of the United States were from transportation, 25% from electricity, 24% from industry, 13% from commercial and residential buildings and 11% from agriculture. In 2021, the electric power sector was the second largest source of U.S. greenhouse gas emissions, accounting for 25% of the U.S. total. These greenhouse gas emissions are contributing to climate change in the United States, as well as worldwide.
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Charls Edward Walker was Under Secretary of the United States Department of the Treasury from 1969 to 1972, and Deputy Secretary of the Treasury in 1973 under John Connally.
Dan K. Eberhart is chief executive officer of Canary, LLC, a Denver, Colorado-based drilling-services company, and managing partner of Eberhart Capital, LLC.
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George "David" Banks is an American political advisor who served in the administrations of US Presidents George W. Bush and Donald Trump, advising on energy policy and climate change. He was the executive vice president of the American Council for Capital Formation, a pro-business think tank.