What Roosevelters Told Congress This Week

Indivar Dutta-Gupta and Kristina Karlsson Testify before Congress

In the last week, two Roosevelt experts testified before Congress, and one common theme emerged: Public-subsidized supports for the wealthy haven’t delivered for the people.

Last Thursday, September 12, Roosevelt Fellow Indivar Dutta-Gupta testified before the US Senate Finance Committee for its 2025 Tax Policy Debate and Tax Avoidance Strategies hearing. After outlining the harms of today’s extreme income and wealth inequality, Dutta-Gupta explained how the tax code has exacerbated the problem—both by favoring income from wealth over income from work, and by starving the public of revenues with top marginal rates that are low by historical standards.

“[P]olicies that generate additional revenues from the wealthy and ultrawealthy can provide additional social benefits, beyond reducing harmful inequality,” Dutta-Gupta said. “For example, these revenues can help fund a basic foundation for all, fair access to opportunity, and desirable scientific and technological advancement.”

In her testimony at a House Natural Resources Committee roundtable, Roosevelt’s Kristina Karlsson traced a similar arc, showing that public subsidies for oil and gas companies haven’t trickled down—and instead, the sector poses threats to our economic stability.

“[I]n addition to contributing to broad-based inflation across fossil fuel–dependent sectors, US oil and gas firms are presenting outsized levels of macroeconomic risk by virtue of their high cost, non-assured levels of supply, and incentives to misrepresent the future of the risks they are creating,” Karlsson testified. “This cannot continue.”

As new Roosevelt research suggests, fossil fuel companies are unlikely to be willing partners.

How Electric Utilities Are Slowing Down the Green Transition

In the coming decades, we’ll need to move from a centralized, fossil fuel–dominated energy system to one driven by renewables and equipped for the demands of AI and manufacturing booms.

But though it’s now less costly to generate electricity from renewables than from fossil fuels, investor-owned utility companies are proving a massive roadblock.

In a new brief, Roosevelt’s Niko Lusiani zeroes in on how incumbent utilities “effectively discriminate against independent renewable energy producers in favor of themselves and their shareholders,” and how their behavior is inflating the cost of the energy transition.

“All else being equal, the current incentive structure leads incumbent utilities to prefer developing slow, expensive, fossil fuel–based infrastructure that they can control within their captive footprints, while also blocking new, cheaper, renewable infrastructure developed by a suite of different actors and transmitted over new, interregional power lines,” Lusiani writes.

Luckily, policymakers at all levels of government have a range of actions they can take to eliminate these bottlenecks, lower families’ utility bills, and help reach the nation’s decarbonization goals.

Read more in “Entrenched Power: How Shareholder-Owned Electric Utilities Hinder the Clean Energy Transition.”

And catch up on more of Roosevelt’s latest research with a new roundup by Editorial Manager Aastha Uprety: “What Is Government For? A Reading List for a More Democratic Economic Vision.”

What We’re Talking About

The Fed’s decision to make a 50-basis-point cut proves that smart, bold investments and big, market-shaping initiatives are not in opposition but are complementary to sustainable growth.

Principal Economist @mikemadowitz shares his thoughts ⬇️ pic.twitter.com/hVGbPWwYm8

— Roosevelt Institute (@rooseveltinst) September 18, 2024

What We’re Reading

The Fed’s Powell Is Cutting Interest Rates. Here’s How the Economy Will Respond. – feat. Roosevelt’s Mike Madowitz – Politico

Jay Powell’s Delay Caused Unnecessary Damage – feat. Roosevelt’s Kristina Karlsson – Revolving Door Project

‘What If We Get It Right?’: Experts Talk about Addressing Climate Crisis in New Book – feat. Roosevelt’s Rhiana Gunn-Wright – NPR

Marguerite Casey Foundation Announces 2024 Cohort of Freedom Scholars – feat. Roosevelt Fellow Daniel Martinez HoSang – Marguerite Casey Foundation