The walkout by Oregon’s Republican senators last week is not unlike the American revolutionaries’ dumping of tea into Boston Harbor, Canby’s Republican State Senator Alan Olsen said in a statement released in absentia Tuesday night.
It was the longtime senator’s first public comments on the walkout by him and his Republican colleagues in protest of House Bill 2020, the proposed cap and trade bill that now appears to be dead, at least for the 2019 session.
But Sen. Olsen’s statement says cap and trade was just the straw that broke the camel’s back, and that the walkout was really the result of a full session of being unable to work with the Democratic supermajority in any meaningful way.
“Without the ability to make substantive changes to legislation, I felt the only option left was to deny a quorum for taxation without representation,” Sen. Olsen said. “Our forefathers did the same thing in Boston Harbor when they dumped the tea into the bay. They had no voice, so they made a statement. No taxation without our voices being heard.”
Sen. Olsen said the proposed cap and trade bill would have cost Oregonians $550 million in the first year, while having an “imperceptible” effect on carbon emissions.
“We are one of the greenest states in the nation,” he said. “Can we do more? Yes, but not to the tune of $550M in the first year.”
Read Sen. Olsen’s complete statement here.
