A move to impose energy taxes as a way of trimming the federal budget deficit would severely hurt farmers and small-town people, says the National Rural Electric Cooperative Association. Rural electric systems operate at cost and are owned by their customers, said Bob Bergland, executive vice president of the association. Any price increase caused by energy taxes would be paid by consumers. ``Rural consumers can't escape,'' Bergland said Tuesday. ``They are the equity owners of the electric systems which provide electricity to them.'' Bergland, who was secretary of agriculture in the Carter administration, joined natural gas and electric utility leaders to protest any move by the Bush administration to raise money by imposing new energy taxes. One type of tax that has been suggested would base the tax on the amount of carbon in the fuel. Coal, petroleum and natural gas would be taxed, but nuclear, hydroelectric and solar energy would not because they contain no carbon, an air pollutant. Still another plan would base the tax on the amount of energy, measured in British thermal units, or BTUs, that a fuel contains. The BTU tax would apply to all fuels. Bergland, whose member co-ops serve more than 25 million people, said the rural economy has ``taken severe shocks'' the last decade through droughts, floods, falling commodity prices, plummeting land price and a sharp decline in federal funding for rural areas. ``Energy taxes will unfairly penalize rural areas which already have higher electricity rates, either by driving up the price of fuel used to generate electricity or by taxing the selling price of electricity,'' he said. A joint statement protesting the use of energy taxes was signed by Bergland; George Lawrence, president of the American Gas Association; Tom Kuhn, president of the Edison Electric Institute; and Larry Hobart, executive director of the American Public Power Association. ``The burden of broad-based energy taxes will fall unevenly across consumers and income classes, among industries and across regions of the country,'' the statement said. ``This is unfair and inequitable taxation.'' BTU and carbon-content taxes were described as ``inherently regressive.'' Such taxes were said capable of raising at least $14 billion a year. ``Heating, lighting, cooking and water heating are not luxuries but essentials,'' the statement said. ``Lower-income families already pay three to four times more of their income for energy than the average American family.''
