If you have recently heard or read about the Green New Deal, but aren’t sure what it is, this is the time to find out. Actually, that term has been around for quite a while. The concept may have originated in 2007 columns by Tom Friedman in which he invoked Roosevelt’s New Deal as a model for a broad program to “create a whole new clean power industry.” The approach was further promoted by a 2008 report of the Green New Deal Group and later that year it was endorsed by the United Nations Environment Programme. Then, in 2012 and 2016, it was a key part of the platform of Green Party presidential candidate, Jill Stein. Still, for many of us it remained well under the radar.
The current version of the Green New Deal made a splashy entrance onto the stage of the mainstream media when it was introduced as a resolution in the House of Representatives by Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, a first-term Congresswoman from Queens, New York, and Massachusetts Senator Edward J. Markey. Ms. Ocasio-Cortez, who is often referred to by her initials, AOC, gained national attention when she won a primary election against a senior member of the Democratic House leadership and then prevailed handily in the general election. Although now in office for only a few weeks, AOC has shown a stunning talent for publicity and has drawn nation-wide attention and support. If she did nothing else, her efforts to date would seem to give her a lock on Rookie of the Year.
The 2019 Green New Deal (GND), like its predecessors, seeks to establish a clean power regime. It is however, much more as it provides, in effect, a blueprint for a progressive (or, in the current usage, socialist) utopia. Taking a mere 14 pages, the GND Resolution contains no details as to how its lofty goals are to be achieved or financed, but their very breadth make it worth perusing, and it can be found here. As a writer in The Hill put it:
[T]he resolution is such a catch-all mish-mash list of environmental and socio-economic problems and solutions that no member could be expected to concisely explain its breadth, scope or ramifications. As House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) told Politico, “The green dream, or whatever they call it, nobody knows what it is, but they’re for it, right?”
The Resolution promises, among many other things, to upgrade every single building in the country in order to achieve “net zero” emissions within 10 years. It acknowledges that meeting that goal would require an effort and investment comparable not merely to the New Deal but to World War II. Even with so massive an effort and investment, however, accomplishment of the hoped-for goal would be doubtful. “I’m afraid I just cannot see how we could possibly go to zero carbon in the 10-year time frame,” Ernest Moniz, a nuclear physicist and Secretary of Energy under President Barack Obama, told NPR. “It’s just impractical. And if we start putting out impractical targets, we may lose a lot of key constituencies [like labor unions] who we need to bring along to have a real low-carbon solution on the most rapid time frame that we can achieve.”
In addition to the overambitious scope and time frame to meet its energy goal, the Resolution makes a variety of promises of a social and economic nature. It would guarantee everyone in the United States “a job with a family-sustaining wage,” “adequate family and medical leave,” “paid vacations,” “high-quality health care,” “higher education,” and “affordable, safe and adequate housing.” With a breathtaking determination to leave no constituency behind, the Resolution would establish a duty of the federal government to create a Green New Deal that would, among other things:
promote justice and equity by stopping current, preventing future, and repairing historic oppression of indigenous communities, communities of color, migrant communities, deindustrialized communities, depopulated rural communities, the poor, low-income workers, women, the elderly, the unhoused, people with disabilities, and youth (referred to in this resolution as ‘‘frontline and vulnerable communities’’)
If the Resolution were not problematic enough on its face, further controversy was stimulated by a fact sheet issued by AOC’s office and since withdrawn. The fact sheet called for the abandonment of nuclear energy, building no new plants and decommissioning existing plants as quickly as possible. The fact sheet also spoke of getting rid of “farting cows and airplanes,” promising to build “high-speed rail at a scale where air travel stops becoming necessary.” And it called for providing economic security not only for those who were unable to work, but those who were “unwilling to work.”
Despite, or perhaps because of, its extravagant promises, the GND Resolution was introduced with 67 co-sponsors in the House and 11 in the Senate, and it has since claimed the support, with varying degrees of specificity, of several prominent Democratic candidates for president, including Kamala Harris, Elizabeth Warren, Cory Booker, Kirsten Gillibrand, and Amy Klobuchar. (At her townhall on Monday night, Klobuchar expressed some caution, describing the GND as “aspirational.”)
Republicans have, not surprisingly, taken a quite different view, starting at the top with President Trump, who offered a characteristically hyperbolic and inaccurate comment: “I really don’t like their policy of taking away your car or taking away your airplane rights, of ‘let’s hop a train to California,’ of you’re not allowed to own cows anymore.” In the Senate, Majority Leader Mitch McConnell will submit the Resolution to a vote, clearly intending to put Democratic Senators from Red States on the spot. In the meantime, some observers from the right have weighed in to express skepticism and concern.
Marc Thiessen, writing in the Washington Post, addressed the economics of the GND and pointed out that neither the wealth tax proposed by Senator Elizabeth Warren, nor the 70% marginal rate proposed by Ocasio-Cortez would fund a level of investment comparable to World War II spending–between 40 and 50 per cent of gross domestic product.
Today, federal spending amounts to 21 percent of GDP, or $4.4 trillion annually. Increasing it to between 40 and 50 percent of GDP would require doubling government expenditures to between $84 and $105 trillion over 10 years (and that’s without factoring in rising GDP). But Warren’s wealth tax would raise just $2.75 trillion over 10 years. And according to the nonpartisan Tax Foundation, Ocasio-Cortez’s 70 percent marginal rate might raise at best $189 billion over 10 years, and could actually cost the federal government $63.5 billion in lost revenue by stifling economic growth and encouraging capital flight.
In short, the staggering cost of the GND cannot be funded merely by the tempting solution of “soaking the rich.”
Max Boot also surveyed the elaborate promises of the GND and their staggering costs, concluding:
Defenders of the Green New Deal claim it’s merely laying out ambitious goals with the details to be determined later. That’s one way to look at it. My own view is that this is the left-wing version of Trump’s farcical promise that he would build a border wall and make Mexico pay for it. This isn’t policymaking; this is fantasyland. The Green New Deal is tailor-made for Trump’s demagogic — and false — attacks that the Democrats are trying to turn the United States into another Venezuela. Indeed, Trump is already making this argument on the stump.
Democrats need to be careful: They have a heaven-sent opportunity to win back the White House and Senate in 2020 and become the majority party for a generation to come. This is an opportunity they can easily squander if they turn themselves into the far-left caricatures that Trump and Fox News would like them to become.
Indeed, the scariest thing about the GND is not that some or all of it will ever be enacted, but that it just might get Donald Trump re-elected.
Really good but unrealistic in the USA at this time. The country now needs a centrist leader to bridge the gap and restore good manners and adult behavior.
I agree with you, Roger, but are we too polarized to elect a centrist leader?
I hate to say it, but I believe Donald Trump will be re-elected, not because he deserves to be but because the Democrats will find a way to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory. A substantial element of the party is enraptured with “Progressive” policies that are not based on reality. We saw how well that worked when they sent John Kerry to do battle with George W. Bush.
If the Dems are smart enough to nominate a mainstream candidate, they run the risk of alienating the young liberals who could decide to sit this one out. Can you really balance a Joe Biden ticket with Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez? Were they to find a winning team, getting an infrastructure bill through Congress and fixing health care probably would occupy a first term. In its spare time the new administration could tackle a sensible, equitable tax structure not based on class warfare. Common sense elements of the Green New Deal would have to wait for the second term. All of this would require that three syllable word……..compromise. Otherwise, RINOs will continue to wander in the wilderness.
As one who does believe that the most important outcome of the coming election is that Trump be defeated, but that the Democrats campaign must focus on specific positive, realistic proposals, not just defeating Trump, I am concerned that the opportunity to win will be lost by overreaching for unrealistic goals. The GND, free college education, Medicare for all, etc., are good examples of proposals that, great as they may sound to some, are ahead of their time, and will not sell to independent, moderate voters, especially in all-important swing states. The difficulty is that the bulk of real energy now in the Democratic Party is with the younger, much more progressive crowd. Anything too progressive is too readily labeled socialistic, still anethma to the majority of voters. Give me an incrementalist, a Joe Biden, maybe Sherrod Brown, please.
I agree Bill. Biden needs a young, smart progressive like Amy Kobuchar or Sherrod Brown who can work with him and Congress. Best.
-Roger
My hope is that the Green New Deal is aspirational rather than delusional. Throw out some strong ideas and see what gets traction? For starters. Democrats need to focus on getting actual work done with those who are the Democrats and Republicans currently in office. It’s good that some funding for infrastructure was just passed, for example. Carry through! Show what can be accomplished with bipartisanship, something Republicans who want to distance themselves from Trump’s path (and hope to be returned to office in 2020) will also want to do. Of course, do further publicize that Trump had money available to build a portion of border wall since he’s been in office that he did not use … and why! This inaction, in face of the extreme publicity of his desire to do so, putting our nation at risk with an extended government shutdown and now a national emergency he admits was not needed, puts his administration well behind the border wall portions actually built during both the Obama and George W. Bush administrations without much fanfare. Get this kind of information out there … but don’t make the election all about Trump. It is… but it isn’t. It’s about preserving our democracy and rule of law. If the word “socialism” is the big scare that the right hopes it is, please point out that “socialism” is about providing services and how those services are funded, such as fire protection, first responders, Medicare coverage, etc. Thank goodness the fire department doesn’t check to see if we paid our bill before responding to a fire 911 call! It’s an important service that is paid for with taxes. The term socialism doesn’t have to be pie-in-the sky (like the Green New Deal) OR a gateway idea to becoming a communist country! And we don’t need to “soak the rich” – but we do need taxation that funds the services important to all of us. Medicare for All may be a rallying call, but for a Democrat to be elected, perhaps the idea put out by one of the candidates that people could choose to sign up for Medicare at say, age 50, while others who prefer to wait could do so. It’s a partial change in direction that doesn’t get rid of insurance companies or demonize pharmaceutical companies (nor did The Affordable Care Act – which doesn’t seem so bad anymore, does it?) Radical change may be what is needed, but it isn’t what’s going to win the 2020 election or save our rule of law…and those are the highest priority. But here’s a radical idea: a letter to the L.A. Times today noted that if we accept Trump’s national emergency as is, it will set precedent …for the next Democrat in the White House to declare a national emergency on climate change, and circumvent Congress to use the U.S. Budget for big money projects addressing that!
The Dems need an adult in the room. Joe Biden anyone?
The Whereas section 1,2,and 3 of the Green New Deal reads like The Donald’s speeches to his large crowds of supporters wherever they gather. AOC has the media’s voice but The Donald has the people’s voice.
1. Create millions of good, high-wage jobs: millions of jobs have been created and wages are rising since he became President.
2. Promote unprecedented prosperity and security for all people: unemployment is at record lows since his policies have taken hold in only two years..
3. Counteract systemic injustices:,government regulations that stifle growth have been eliminated, education is returning to local control, and child care has been improved by government focus since the First Lady has influence.
The Democrats are doing a good job of self- destruction with this platform. I didn’t read that people can choose not to work but still benefit. Is that AOC’s special interpretation?
Max Boot got it right. This really is the equivalent of Trump’s Wall with Mexico paying for it (even though the ultimate objective is not so heinous). How very SAD!
Think and revisit 2016. The small number of popular votes Jill Stein garnered in three key states, Michigan, Wisconsin and Penn., flipped the election to Trump. Scary!
Doug,
Thx so much for providing the specifics of the Green New Deal, as to which I was previously ignorant. I had no idea…I just assumed it proposed that we all live on fairy-dust…and now I know it does!
Seems to me that AOC and DJT are kindred spirits.
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