[Date]
Representative-elect Will Lawrence
U.S. House of Representatives
Washington, DC 20515
Dear Representative-elect Lawrence,
Congratulations on flipping Michigan's 7th. You co-founded the Sunrise Movement, and you won by making household energy bills part of the argument. You said data centers would raise those bills and that DTE and Consumers Energy should answer for their rate increases. I wrote a bill about who pays when fossil energy gets expensive, and I want to ask for your help with it.
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.
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.
I know your seat is a swing seat, so here is how ELBA treats the kitchen-table question. The dividend goes to every person in equal shares, with a full share for each child and no income cutoff. Utilities could not pass the profits tax into their rates, and sellers could not blame it for price increases beyond what they actually pay. Low-income households would get a bill credit capping home energy costs at 6 percent of income, plus protection from shutoffs during extreme heat and cold. LIHEAP would be funded at no less than $10 billion a year. I would rather you tell me where this falls short for Lansing-area families than leave it unread.
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, and I drove to it because there was no other way to get there. Until 2014 I believed what Exxon sold me about carbon dioxide and climate models, though Eunice Foote showed in 1856 that CO2 traps heat. I don't blame ordinary people who were duped, myself included. We don't need a technology breakthrough; we need a moral one.
My ask: would you be an early cosponsor when the bill is introduced in January? If a first-term signature on this bill is too much for your district, I would still value a conversation about how to frame it for Michigan, and your read on whether a narrower Title I would travel further.
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