Money For Nothing: The Green New Deal
Money For Nothing: The Green New Deal
By Todd Strandberg
The new Socialist representative for Congress, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, has become a gift from heaven to conservative bloggers. She recently co-authored what is being called “The Green New Deal (GND).” When the document came out, it was widely praised by the mainstream media and a host of Democratic leaders.
This plan is bold in calling for a massive transformation of our society, but the goals and timeline are absolutely insane. There is no way they could be implemented with our current technology and resources.
Within 10 years the GND calls for us to move America to 100% clean and renewable energy and decommission every nuclear plant. Other widely derided lines included a call for “high-speed rail at a scale where air travel stops becoming necessary”; expanding public transit “with goals to replace every combustion-engine vehicle”; “economic security for all who are unable or unwilling to work”; and a goal to “fully get rid of farting cows and airplanes.”
I’m just stunned that such an idiotic plan could have been issued by a member of congress. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez should be sitting in a corner wearing a dunce hat for producing a document with such faulty math. The starting cost would have been at least $30 trillion. Economists are concerned that we just passed $22 trillion for our national debt, so it would be pure folly to have a plan that calls for about doubling this number.
My favorite part is the proposal to give free money to people “unwilling to work.” The Norwegian government just ended a program that gave out cash to people for doing nothing. The trial program found that the free money didn’t make people more willing to work; it just made them happier.
Sen. Tom Cotton only sees red in the Green New Deal document. He blames the news media for engaging in a “Stalin-like” cover-up of the freshman New York congresswoman’s plan. Cotton, a Republican from my home state of Arkansas, said in a radio interview on “The Hugh Hewitt Show” that the document revealed a liberal ambition to “have the power and the control of those Americans’ lives to implement their radical vision for humanity.”
Cotton said it was “remarkable” how many Democratic presidential candidates “had leapt onto a proposal that was going to confiscate every privately owned vehicle in America within a decade, and ban air travel so we could all drive or ride around on high-speed light rail, supposedly powered by unicorn tears.”
When asked how she planned to pay for her massive program, AOC pointed out that large parts of the Federal budget operated from deficit spending. Her Green New Deal would be an investment that would eventually pay for itself. Steven Rattner, who was an adviser to the treasury department during the Obama administration, offered a rare gift of clear thinking on the calls for massive spending on social programs in a New York Times op-Ed:
“Medicare for all. The Green New Deal. Free college tuition. With each new entrant into the Democratic presidential sweepstakes comes a fresh cascade of ambitious social programs to entice and excite would-be supporters. The list of pay-fors, to use a bit of Washington jargon, grows more slowly. They’ll pay for this how again? Tax the rich; tax the rich – or take cover behind a convenient bit of progressive dogma: Don’t worry about the fiscal impact because America’s rising budget deficits and debt levels don’t much matter.
“That’s a scary drift of thought, and it should set off alarm bells for all Americans. Vast increases in debt will ultimately compromise Washington’s ability to maintain its current array of spending programs, let alone add new ones, and threaten our standard of living.”
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., made a brilliant political move by announcing he’s bringing the Green New Deal resolution to a vote. Sen. Ed Markey, D-Mass, one of the co-authors of the plan, said the vote was “nothing but an attempt to sabotage the movement we are building.” Markey doesn’t want a vote on his sprawling blueprint for the future because he knows voters would reject its massive cost.
It would be easy to say that the Green New Deal is just another example of how the world has become overrun with madness and ignorance. It is an exercise in buffoonery, but evil is the primary driving force. The Democrats don’t care if the math doesn’t work for their plan. They want the power it gives them. Any hint of doubt is smothered in deception and lies. By the time they’ve convinced the public to join their side, they’ve completely lost track of reality and will do the will of him who specializes in deception.
“But evil men and seducers shall wax worse and worse, deceiving, and being deceived” (2 Timothy 3:13).
–Todd