The plan will be weaponized in partisan disputes
Prasad 22, PhD, Professor of Sociology at Northwestern University and a 2015 Guggenheim fellow (Monica, “Hidden benefits and dangers of carbon tax,” PLOS Climate, https://journals.plos.org/climate/article?id=10.1371/journal.pclm.0000052)//BB
In a sense, using carbon tax revenue to replace other tax revenue pits the goal of reducing environmental emissions against the goal of preserving revenue for government programs, because efforts to reduce carbon emissions will starve the government of funds. Of course, taxes could always be raised in the future if and when this problem arises, and Gillis [35] suggests tax cuts are often reversed or undone in subtle ways. However, in the American context, cutting taxes has become an important electoral tool, and politicians therefore have an incentive to spotlight and campaign against tax increases, making maintenance of tax revenue more difficult than in other countries [36]. Carbon taxes could thus become a new means of reducing the size of government by changing the default situation to one of declining tax revenues.