[Date]
The Honorable Judy Chu
U.S. House of Representatives
Washington, DC 20515
Dear Representative Chu,
Congratulations on your re-election. You are an original cosponsor of H.R. 1135, the Polluters Pay Climate Fund Act, and when you introduced its predecessor with Rep. Nadler and Sen. Van Hollen you said it was "past time for these corporations to pay their fair share." Rep. Nadler is retiring, and you sit on Ways and Means, the committee that matters most. I am writing to ask you to be the Ways and Means champion of a bill that goes one step further.
I am a private citizen in Utah, not a lobbyist. I ran for Congress in 2020, and I wrote this bill.
The numbers have only hardened since I first wrote to Congress in 2020. Human-caused warming reached 1.37°C in 2025 and is rising about 0.27°C per decade. About 130 billion tonnes of CO2 remain for an even chance of holding 1.5°C, roughly three years of today's emissions.
The Extinguishing the Social License to Burn Fossils Act (ELBA) will be introduced in January. ELBA changes the rules rather than villainizing anyone. It taxes the excess profits of large fossil companies from 25% up to a 75% cap, and taxes new extraction capacity at 75% of all its profit. A company still extracting after its fuel's statutory end date (coal 2035, oil and gas 2040) pays 75% on all its income. A carbon charge starting at $40 a ton, matched by a charge on imports, returns 60% of the money as an equal per-person climate dividend paid quarterly. Export licenses fall to zero by 2040, and no new fossil capacity is built. Workers get wage, health and pension guarantees, and communities and Tribes get transition funds and LIHEAP. Title I (revenue, dividend, guarantees) is written to move in reconciliation; Title II (ceiling, new capacity, exports) is regulatory.
Polluters Pay looks back at emissions from 2000 to 2023; ELBA looks forward, and sends the money to people in equal shares. Title I is written as amendments to the tax code, the work of your committee, and the bill is drafted to be referred first to Ways and Means. Your constituents know the cost: the Eaton Fire killed 19 people in Altadena and Pasadena, and you have said climate change is making California's fire seasons longer and more severe.
I have a daughter who will spend her life in the world we are making. My office sat between an oil refinery and a medical waste incinerator. Until 2014 I believed what Exxon sold me about carbon dioxide and climate models, though Eunice Foote showed in 1856 that CO2 traps heat. We don't need a technology breakthrough; we need a moral one.
I have three requests. Please be an original cosponsor and Ways and Means lead. Please ask the chair for a hearing on Title I. And please help me find colleagues on the committee who would join you, since Title I is the part written to move in reconciliation.
I will gladly testify, or simply talk. Take the bill, amend it as you see fit; please.
In solidarity,
Russ Fugal
https://climate.fugl.dev
https://medium.com/@rfugal