Senator Suzette Martinez Valladares (R-Santa Clarita) today vice-chaired a joint hearing of the Senate Environmental Quality Committee and a Budget Subcommittee to examine the California Air Resources Board’s (CARB) proposed Cap-and-Invest regulations. The CARB is required to finalize the new program by May 28th, and Sen. Valladares used her opening remarks to demand that the board confront an uncomfortable reality: California families are being crushed by costs, and state policy is playing a direct role.
“I want to start by saying something that apparently has become controversial in California: families matter too,” said Valladares. “Californians are not just struggling with affordability; they are being crushed by it. Gas. Electricity. Insurance. Groceries. Housing. The question before us today is whether this state is willing to honestly acknowledge the role our policies are playing in those costs.”
Climate Policy Without Affordability Is Not Leadership
Sen. Valladares made clear she supports clean energy but argued that climate policy that ignores affordability and leakage is not environmental leadership. When California shuts down domestic refining and replaces it with fuel imported from countries with weaker environmental standards, she warned, global emissions may actually rise. And, while Californians pay more, workers lose jobs, union trades lose careers, communities lose tax revenue, and the state grows increasingly dependent on foreign imports.
“That is not transition,” said Valladares. “That is outsourcing. And I think today we need to stop pretending otherwise.”
Costs Will Rise
Sen. Valladares pointed to CARB’s own proposal to remove 118 million allowances from the market through 2030 while simultaneously tightening compliance obligations. She noted that even the nonpartisan Legislative Analyst’s Office acknowledges the package creates real tradeoffs between environmental ambition, affordability, leakage, reliability, and economic stability.
California currently consumes roughly 13 billion gallons of fuel per year. Demand has not declined, but refining capacity has, dropping from roughly 30 refineries decades ago to just a handful today. Sen Valladares pressed the committee on what happens if another refinery closes and whether any contingency plan exists.
“The question is not whether costs rise,” Valladares continued. “The question is: How much? Who pays? And what happens when industries leave faster than demand declines? Let’s stop insulting Californians by pretending otherwise.”
Affordability Is Statutory
Sen. Valladares reminded the committee that Cap-and-Invest was never designed as a revenue-generation machine. State law, through AB 32, SB 32, AB 398, and AB 1207, repeatedly directed CARB to reduce emissions cost-effectively, minimize leakage, protect ratepayers, and avoid disproportionate impacts on low-income Californians. She called on CARB to treat those statutory obligations as the program’s purpose, not a constraint on its ambition.
Sen. Valladares also warned of a deeper threat: if Californians can no longer trust that Sacramento is being honest about the cost of its policies, public support for climate action itself will collapse.
“My goal today is not to dismantle climate policy,” Valladares concluded. “My goal is to force honesty into this discussion. Because if affordability collapses, public support collapses with it. And if industry leaves California while emissions simply relocate overseas, then we have failed both economically and environmentally.”
Earlier this week, Sen. Valladares joined with the bipartisan Problem Solvers Caucus to call on CARB to prioritize affordability in Cap-And-Invest Program.