In February, Senator John Barrasso, a Wyoming Republican who chairs the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works, introduced a bill to end the federal tax credit for plug-in electric vehicles and establish a new annual "highway user fee" for all "alternative fuel vehicles." If the bill becomes law, these provisions of the Fairness for Every Driver Act would check off two high-priority boxes on the policy wish list of Charles and David Koch, the billionaire petrochemical barons who have built a fortune on the transport and refining of fossil fuels. And this is no coincidence.
Barrasso is the third-highest recipient of campaign donations from Koch Industries, and in remarks on the Senate floor as well as in an op-ed published on the Fox News website, he cited figures from reports funded by the Koch brothers and their donor network. Speaking in the Senate, Barrasso said that the EV program "disproportionately subsidizes wealthy buyers" and that "hard-working Wyoming taxpayers shouldn't have to subsidize wealthy California luxury-car buyers." In effect, Barrasso justified the bill almost entirely with arguments—many misleading, some demonstrably false—tested and refined for years by Koch-affiliated think tanks, advocacy groups, and astroturfing operations.
Senator Barrasso's bill is just one example of how the Koch brothers and their Big Oil allies are working to decelerate the country's transition to electric cars. | 
