View the Sen. Pat Toomey Facebook ad here.
View the Sen. Bob Casey Facebook ad here.

WASHINGTON, D.C. – The League of Conservation Voters (LCV) today launched a digital ad campaign criticizing Sen. Pat Toomey (R-PA) and thanking Sen. Bob Casey (D-PA) for their votes on Senator Brian Schatz’s (D-HI) amendment to S. 2012, the Senate Energy Policy Modernization Act, which would have phased out taxpayer subsidies for coal and some of the largest producers of oil and gas over a four-year period. The ads, on Facebook, Twitter, and other digital platforms, target their constituents and will run for about one week. This is part of a larger $370,000 multimedia ad campaign holding senators accountable or applauding them for their votes on Sen. Schatz’s amendment.

“We are proud of Sen. Casey for voting to invest in the Commonwealth’s clean energy future,” said Conservation Voters of Pennsylvania Executive Director Josh McNeil.  “Sen. Toomey voted against the interests of his constituents once again, continuing to offer taxpayer handouts to some of the world’s biggest corporate polluters.”

“It is an outrage that Sen. Toomey is putting polluter profits ahead of Pennsylvanians by voting to continue taxpayer handouts to the fossil fuel industry,” said LCV President Gene Karpinski. “At the same time, we applaud Sen. Casey for voting to end these taxpayer giveaways to these mature and highly-polluting industries. The reality is simple: oil, gas, and coal companies benefit from billions of dollars of handouts every year at taxpayers’ expense while fueling the climate crisis and threatening public health and the environment. Some of these dirty energy incentives have been on the books for more than a century and with key incentives for wind and solar being phased out over the next several years, the time to stop these outdated taxpayer giveaways is now.”

On February 2, Sen. Schatz offered an amendment to S. 2012, the Energy Policy Modernization Act of 2015, which would have phased out fossil fuel subsidies for coal and some of the largest producers of oil and gas over a four-year period. These subsidies amount to billions of dollars of taxpayer handouts for these mature, highly-polluting industries and the Schatz amendment parallels the timeframe over which Congress recently agreed to phase out critical tax incentives for the wind and solar industries. The Senate rejected the Schatz amendment by a bipartisan vote of 50-45 (Senate Roll Call Vote 14). Sen. Toomey voted NAY, and Sen. Casey voted YEA.

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