Posted on 12/25/2018 5:46:45 PM PST by vannrox
Democrats are lining up to support Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s “Green New Deal.”
The proposal could be the largest expansion of government since the Great Society or New Deal.
Ocasio-Cortez’s plan could cost tens of trillions of dollars.
Democrats are increasingly lining up to support a “Green New Deal,” which, while vague on details, could end up being the largest expansion of government in decades.
As it stands, the “Green New Deal” is more aspirational than actual policy. Indeed, it takes its name from the New Deal of the 1930s, and its main backer, incoming Democratic New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, compared it to the Great Society of the 1960s.
More than 40 Democratic lawmakers support the “Green New Deal” as part of a broad plan to fight global warming and bring about what they see as “economic, social and racial justice.” A poll found most Americans supported the deal, but knew little about it.
But the big question is when Americans find out what’s in the “Green New Deal,” will they be willing to pay for it?
Ocasio-Cortez’s “Green New Deal” calls for creating a House committee to draft legislation to fight global warming and turn the U.S. economy into something akin to what Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders envisions. Indeed, the “Green New Deal” could be a preview of what policies the Democratic Party will back in the 2020 elections.
“This is going to be the New Deal, the Great Society, the moon shot, the civil-rights movement of our generation,” Ocasio-Cortez said at a panel event in early December alongside Sanders, a likely 2020 presidential contender.
Those goals include moving the U.S. to 100 percent green energy, federal job guarantees for workings forced out of their fossil fuel jobs, guaranteed minimum income and universal health care.
Democrats will take control of the House in 2019 and many want to see global warming become a central part of their agenda. Republicans are unlikely to go along with a green deal in any form, and cracks are even appearing among Democrats on climate policy.
Since the “Green New Deal” lacks specifics, it’s hard to gauge the total cost, but similar climate and welfare policies are estimated to cost trillions of dollars.
For starters, moving the U.S. to a 100-percent renewable electric grid could cost as much as $5.2 trillion over two decades, according to a 2010 study by the conservative Heritage Foundation. That’s about $218 billion to move the grid away from coal and natural gas.
On top of that, the non-energy-related portions of the Green New Deal could cost trillions more, including universal health care and guaranteed income.
The libertarian Mercatus Center released a study in July that found Sanders’s “Medicare for All” plan would cost $32.6 trillion over 10 years. That same month, hedge-fund manager Ray Dalio estimated the cost to taxpayers of a universal basic income policy would top $3.8 trillion a year — and that’s assuming every American citizen got just $12,000 a year.
For comparison, the Great Society policies pursued by the Johnson administration during the 1960s cost $22 trillion, according to estimates from the Heritage Foundation. Former President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s “New Deal” of the 1930s during the Great Depression cost $500 billion in today’s dollars, The Nation reported in 2008.
Of course, both the New Deal and Great Society have left U.S. taxpayers on the hook for trillions in debt and unfunded liabilities — somewhere between $87 trillion and $222 trillion.
While hardly in favor of that, I am amused at the manipulation that goes into talking cost. Why is one figure set out as spending over a twenty year period and another at a ten year period? Do they think the higher number will stick in the voters’ minds and be scarier than plain old annual numbers? Dems and Repubs both employ this technique. Maybe it’s to scare the horses, or their disdain for my and your discernment is done without considering we might notice.
And why would anyone in Congress listen to a word from AOC? She is the most junior of Congressmen even after she gets sworn in.
And the media push anything from her, or just what they are ordered to push?
LOL
Trump has a veto pen and the Reps control the Senate. A tempest in a teapot.
Tax payer revolt.
If millions of small businesses don’t send in their taxes what can they do?
The yo-yos who write these articles just never question amounts.
There is a road map.
How about the “Big Dig” estimates.
How about the the California Bullet Train estimates ?
How about Obamacare estimates ?
fyi...5.2 trillion in 2010 is already up to 5.9 trillion today.
I hate commenting about stuff like this would cause one to think I buy into the premise. I don’t.
But stay silent on it ? The other side would think that means approval...
What can they do ? For starters they will electronically seize all you bank accounts and freeze your assets. Try remaining in business with no cash flow. We will only get our country back at the point of a gun and there will be bloodshed. Or maybe we will all just roll over and take it. I don’t know.
I LOVE that one!
Ocasio-Cortez is not smart enough to dream up anything of this magnitude. I wonder who is really paying her bills and feeding her this plan.
I had to think for a minute....
Love it, too.
Ocasio-Cortez is living proof that 90% of Democrat voters are as dumb as rocks.!
Does this crazy Puerto Rican b*tch with the crazy eyes and the little girl voice plan to walk from Washington, D.C. to her district and back again?
She is opposed to fossil fuels...where does she think jet fuel comes from? And she hates corporations; the airlines are all corporations. Does she make her own clothes, use a smart phone, travel in automobiles? All made by large corporations.
The media push what they are ordered to push. They always have done this.
O.C is smart enough to push what she is told to push. That is how she got elected in the first place.
The people doing the selection of what to push do not have our best interests in mind.
I was asked “Why don’t you give new ideas a chance?” I replied: “Is failure a viable option to success? For a pilot, would CRASH something to experiment with?”
If we could cut NYC, urban New Jersey, Chicago, Philadelphia, LA, and San Francisco out of the nation, it would go a very long way towards restoring sanity in the US.
Which is why the market began crashing on election day.
The only Green thing in the Green New Deal is the Money it will cost.
“More than 40 Democratic lawmakers support the “Green New Deal” “
Why doesn’t the article actually name all of them?
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