Ocasio-Cortez 'Green New Deal' Numbers Coming Out, And They're Atrocious
Since before she was even sworn into office, New York Democratic Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has been promoting what she had dubbed a “Green New Deal,” a sort of environmentalist take on former Democratic President Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s economic “New Deal” that dramatically restructured the United States’ federal government and economy during the Great Depression, for better and for worse.
Few specifics are known about Ocasio-Cortez’s “Green New Deal,” save for the fact that it will be incredibly costly for U.S. taxpayers — estimates range up to $7 trillion over 10 years — and will undoubtedly cause incredible upheaval to our nation’s economy by radically transforming the energy sector and all things related to it.
In an article published Monday, Bloomberg described a letter that Ocasio-Cortez has sent to fellow congressional Democrats that announced, “Next week, we plan to release a resolution that outlines the scope and scale of the Green New Deal.”
“In it, we call for a national, social, industrial and economic mobilization at a scale not seen since World War II,” the self-declared socialist added.
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez begins to sketch out details of “Green New Deal” https://t.co/ccKH76JNo9
— Bloomberg (@business) February 4, 2019
Ocasio-Cortez’s letter laid out a number of goals that would be sought by the “Green New Deal” — though it didn’t specify how those goals would be reached — such as the virtual impossibility of reaching net-zero greenhouse gas emissions “through a fair and just transition for all communities and workers.”
That would somehow create “good, high-wage jobs” in the millions while also miraculously ensuring economic prosperity and security for all, via “investments” — read as taxpayer money — in various infrastructure and industrial projects.
The “Green New Deal” would also somehow create a “sustainable environment for all for generations to come,” which would include cleaner air and water, a more resilient climate and healthier food, all while still providing access to nature for the citizenry that will be paying for all of this through admittedly higher rates of taxation.
For good measure, Ocasio-Cortez also appears to have thrown some of the left’s social justice warrior identitarian politics into the environmentalist mix, as her letter called for the “Green New Deal” to “promote justice and equity by preventing current and repairing historic oppression to frontline and vulnerable communities.”
All of this, and more, would be achieved in as few as 10 years through a massive overhaul of the energy and economic systems our nation relies upon, via taxpayer-funded industrial and infrastructure projects.
Again, while Ocasio-Cortez has yet to issue any sort of price tag on her idea, it would undoubtedly be in the trillions of dollars, perhaps as much as $7 trillion by some estimates, according to Bloomberg. That number is as atrocious as it is amazing.
(To put that in perspective, the entire gross domestic product of the United States in 2017 was $19.4 trillion, according to the American Enterprise Insitute. It’s not just atrocious. It’s staggering.)
Dozens of congressional Democrats have already signed on to support Ocasio-Cortez’s plan, sight unseen, while some members of the Democratic leadership have remained circumspect on the plan’s viability thus far. Democratic Massachusetts Sen. Ed Markey has vowed to introduce companion legislation in the Senate once Ocasio-Cortez’s plan has been introduced in the House.
Predictably, and thankfully, plenty of Republicans have already begun to speak out against it, as the fine details aren’t even necessary to know that such a grandiose plan will be far too expensive and unworkable to ever become an achievable success.
“Americans deserve better than to foot the bill for the Green New Deal’s reckless, expensive, and unattainable goals,” Oklahoma Republican Rep. Markwayne Mullin told Bloomberg. “The Green New Deal, just like proposals for free college or Medicaid for All, is nothing but an empty promise that leaves American taxpayers on the hook.”
Fox News reported that Ocasio-Cortez began to pass around among Democrats a draft copy of her proposed legislation that would somehow eliminate all greenhouse gas emissions from the agricultural and manufacturing industries, while ensuring that 100 percent of energy demands would be met by clean and renewable sources … both of which are all but physically and logistically impossible in the current day and age, if ever.
To pay for this expensive scheme that would radically transform the nation, the draft legislation called for financing provided by “the federal government, using a combination of the Federal Reserve, a new public bank or system of regional and specialized public banks, public venture funds and such other vehicles or structures that the select committee deems appropriate, in order to ensure that interest and other investment returns generated from public investments made in connection with the plan will be returned to the treasury, reduce taxpayer burden and allow for more investment.”
In other words, through the printing of more money by the Federal Reserve, through loans provided by federally insured banks, through congressionally created economic structures, and, of course, through dramatically higher taxes on all Americans.
All told, Ocasio-Cortez’s “Green New Deal” is a veritable pipe dream that has zero prospect of success and would only serve to wreck and ruin our nation’s strengthening economy and global-leading energy sector. Some cynics would suggest that disaster is the actual goal of this gambit, as the destruction of the nation’s economy would make it easier to usher in a much more socialist style of governance.
This plan from Ocasio-Cortez is nothing short of insane and unworkable, and we don’t need to see the specifics to know that American taxpayers and working families would be hardest hit by this environmentalist pie-in-the-sky utopian dream, which in actuality would turn out to be a dystopian nightmare.
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