[Date]
The Honorable Delia C. Ramirez
U.S. House of Representatives
Washington, DC 20515
Dear Representative Ramirez,
Congratulations on your re-election. You were an original cosponsor of H.R. 1135 (Polluters Pay) and of the End Polluter Welfare Act, and in August you joined Rep. Ocasio-Cortez and Sen. Sanders in reintroducing the Green New Deal for Public Housing Act, which treats the climate and housing crises as one problem. That is why I am writing to ask you to be an original cosponsor 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.
Some parts echo your housing work. The dividend is an equal share for every person, with children counted in full, no income phase-down, and no offset or garnishment; a household with a taxpayer identification number instead of a Social Security number gets the same share. LIHEAP is guaranteed at $10 billion a year, and the weatherization money pays for heat pumps and efficient appliances in low-income homes, and for renters only where the landlord agrees not to raise rent because of the work, or evict without just cause, for five years.
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.
My request is that you be an original cosponsor when ELBA is introduced in January. I would also welcome your advice on how its weatherization and dividend language could work alongside your public-housing bill, so that the families who pay most for dirty energy are first in line when the money comes back.
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