OPINION:
The “Green New Deal” is a nutty scheme to completely “decarbonize” the U.S. economy over a decade to rebuild or replace every single building in the United States to make them energy efficient, to declare war on U.S. agriculture (cows belch too much), and, for good measure “provide all people of the United States with high-quality health care; affordable, safe, and adequate housing; economic security and access to clean water, clean air, healthy and affordable food, guarantee a “job with a family-sustaining wage, adequate family and medical leave, paid vacations, and retirement security to all people of the United States.”
Advocates call it the “green leap forward.” Others call it crazy. Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell calls it a “good old fashioned state planned economy.” He used the word “good” in mockery.
Despite its lack of feasibility, mind-boggling cost and overall recklessness, several senators, presidential candidates desperate to pander to a noisy left-wing base. have embraced the Green New Deal. Bernie Sanders of Vermont, Kirsten Gillibrand of New York, Kamala Harris of California, Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, Cory Booker of New Jersey and Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota have co-sponsored a resolution backing the plan.
The Democrats have become Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s party now. Ms. Harris, once regarded as a semi-sensible candidate (she was a tough attorney general and prosecutor in California before going to the Senate), says “I support a Green New Deal and I will tell you why. Climate change is an existential threat to us and we have got to deal with the reality of it.” Yet even if that were true (and it isn’t), it doesn’t explain why she would back the jobs guarantee that is part of the Green New Deal. Ms. Gillibrand calls the Green New Deal “really exciting,” and the more moderate Ms. Klobuchar calls it merely “aspirational.” Why the future it envisions is something to aspire to, she did not say.
Mitch McConnell, the leader of the Republican majority in the U.S. Senate and ever the shrewd tactician, says he will bring the resolution up for a vote in the Senate. This should make the Democrats happy. Every senator yearns for a scheduled vote for his legislation. Mr. McConnell is sometimes accused of being an obstructionist, but here he is offering to shepherd one of the Democrats’ top political priorities toward a vote. How could the Democrats think that’s bad?
Nevertheless, they do. Sen. Charles Schumer of New York, the leader of Senate Democrats, says bringing up the bill for a vote is a nefarious plot to force Democrats to actually vote on legislation they embrace. It’s a measure of the cynicism of the political process circa 2019 that voting on a bill that senators claim to support is a dastardly plot.
Mr. Schumer thought he found a way out of this pickle. He’s decided that, rather than actually vote for or against the Green New Deal, when voting time comes Democrats will instead vote “present.” At least that was the plan until Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin of West Virginia, a coal-producing state, threw cold water on the idea, saying he would vote no. Mr. Manchin’s stand will make it untenable for the rest of the Democratic caucus to vote “present.”
Senate Republicans have accused the Democrats of wanting to duck a vote on their own legislative priority, and they’re obviously correct. Even the sponsor of the resolution in the House of Representatives, the homecoming queen of the House Democrats, calls the Schumer scheme a “sham.”
“The proposal we are talking about is, frankly, delusional,” Sen. McConnell rightly told the Senate. Nearly everyone who has looked at it, Democrats and Republicans alike, privately or publicly agree. If Mr. McConnell put the Green New Deal up for a vote that very vote would expose Democratic cynicism plain and clear. Democrats know the Green New Deal is fantastical nonsense, but don’t want to say so lest they offend the crazies among them on whom they are counting next year.
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