Penalizing large home owners

The WP reports that John Dingell, powerful chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee wants to phaseout "the interest tax deduction on home mortgages for homes over 3,000 square feet. Owners would keep most of the deduction for homes at the lower end of the scale, but it would be eliminated entirely for homes of 4,200 feet or more."

So under Dingell's proposal you pay more in taxes if you have a large home. This will create incentives for some homeowners who have extra rooms they don't use to destroy the rooms to reduce their tax burden.

Perhaps Dingell wants to encourage people to have small homes so these homes don't use too much energy. But if people are penalized for having lots of floor space then they might instead demand very high ceilings and so not necessarily reduce their overall heating bill. Any sane energy-conservation motivated tax on housing would be based on cubic not square feet. But I suppose it's too much to ask for Congressmen to think in three dimensions.