Nothing in Commonwealth

As July begins, Virginians brace for higher gas taxes, hoping that the $68 price of a barrel of crude oil will start to bring the price at the pump back down. However, they will very soon be hit with a 7% increase in their electric bills.

Iran? No. Trump tariffs? No.

This is because, as Gov. Abigail Spanberger promised the lords of the Green Energy Cabal, Virginia has reentered the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative. This is the classic cap-and-trade scheme with a cool new, hip name.

Not a week passed after she announced the reentry into the initiative before Dominion filed with the State Corporation Commission for rate increases to cover the fees they will have to pay to the overseeing body for the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative.

You have to pay for credits if you use more than your allotment of carbon credits to generate your electricity. You buy them from members who don’t, and if there aren’t any to buy, the money just goes into the initiative’s bank account for when someone does have credits to sell.

Under the heading of “win-win” for Spanberger, she can blame all that electric use on data centers, not former Gov. Ralph Northam’s economic suicide pact with California called “Green Virginia 2030,” which already had Dominion take two power plants offline and turn Virginia into the largest importer of electricity in the USA. (Thus, that controversial “Valley Link” power line project.)

However, there is a commonwealth not far away that—to the surprise of many—pulled itself out of the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative. That commonwealth is Pennsylvania. Similarities?

Sure, they have a Democrat governor; they even have a Democrat governor who fancies himself a contender for the presidential nomination in 2028. That’s where the similarities start to fade.

Their Democrat governor, who fancies himself a contender for the presidential nomination in 2028, realized that hitting his citizens with a massive electric bill increase was not a good path to that end goal. So, Josh Shapiro did what no other U.S. governor except Glenn Youngkin has done: pulled his state out of the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative.

Maybe Virginia’s governor should have called Harrisburg and asked Shapiro for advice. However, after Senate leader Louise Lucas told Washington, D.C., press that Spanberger has reached out to talk to her fewer times than the Republican Youngkin ever did, you start to wonder if maybe Spanberger has a reaching-out problem.

Pennsylvania’s Shapiro has made it very clear that he has great concerns over the increase in Pennsylvania’s utility bills. He said repeatedly on the campaign trail that the initiative is bad for Pennsylvania. However, when that commonwealth’s courts ruled that the initiative’s carbon tax was unconstitutional, the governor had the decision appealed.

So, he may not believe in his heart that the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative is bad policy, but that doesn’t matter. His citizens are not going to be paying higher electric bills because when somebody sees a presidential campaign looming, ideology and/or party platform planks can go out the window.

Another note on Pennsylvania: They are also trying to reinvigorate a long and illustrious history of industry, building everything from tractors to most of the steel in the USA at one point. Shapiro must have realized that Pennsylvanians working are surely going to find life in the Keystone State more—how does Spanberger say it? Oh yes, “affordable.”

Did the fact that Pennsylvania has a Republican majority in its General Assembly play into this? I would not try to insult your intelligence by saying it didn’t.

However, despite the number of seats in deficit the Republican Party finds itself in Virginia’s General Assembly, the district-by-district deficit is a percentage point or two after millions of out-of-state dollars were spent on Democrat candidates. Add to that only 40%—and sometimes 35%—voter turnout, and it becomes clear that Virginia is not far from the same kind of Republican majority in the House and Senate that Pennsylvanians have.

Until then, Virginians are going to be paying higher electric bills because too many Republicans stayed home on Election Day and didn’t deliver at least one house in majority to stand up to the governor’s plans to increase everyone’s electric utilities.

For good measure, Spanberger signed a law this year making it illegal to do what Youngkin did when he pulled out of the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative. Now there has to be legislation passed and signed by the governor to rescue us.

Maybe that can be the plot of “Shrek 6.”

We publish a variety of perspectives. Nothing written here is to be construed as representing the views of the Daily Signal.