by Sean Hannity
Notice that Chakrabarti didn’t say the GND is about both climate and the economy, but that it originally had nothing to do with climate. He also said it’s about “the entire economy.” That’s not code for socialism, it’s a naked admission—they want to control the economy from top to bottom, which should horrify adherents of free markets everywhere. It’s a ruse to trick us into giving up our liberty and our wealth so leftists can realize their vision of a socialist utopia. If they succeed, people won’t just be leaving New York, New Jersey, Illinois, and California—they’ll be leaving America.
AOC and her loose-lipped aide are not the only ones who see climate hysteria as a Trojan horse for socialism. In Curbed, writer Diana Budds explains that the GND “is really about designing an entirely new world. It involves unbuilding our mistakes—and building an equitable, just, and sustainable future.”25 Roll Call writers Benjamin Hulac and Elvina Nawaguna argue, “At its core, the Green New Deal is an economic stimulus plan designed to use climate change, as it accelerates and its effects come into sharper view, as a springboard to confront issues such as income inequality that a warming world will aggravate.”26 So the real concern isn’t that climate change will kill us all in ten years, but that it will make the rich richer? You can’t make this up.
No one should doubt the connection between environmental alarmism and socialism. Environmentalist and author Bill McKibben confidently asserts that President Trump and the Republicans are completely out of sync with the American people on the environment. “That’s why all the thinking that falls under the general rubric of the Green New Deal is so smart,” writes McKibben. “It understands the climate crisis as a lens through which to view the world—a change to address not only its rising temperature but the rising inequality that roils our politics. If your own life is insecure, it’s harder to imagine change of the kind we need to deal with this moment. Ideas like a federal job guarantee for anyone who wants to help with the renewables transition are important precisely because they give people a chance to get their feet on the ground.”27
The Green New Deal is horrifying, ambitious, reckless, and fiscally incoherent. But it cannot be dismissed as some pie-in-the-sky leftist fantasy, because Democrats are dead serious about it. It’s not just activists promoting this, but intellectuals, commentators, journalists, and Democratic Party officials.28 Ninety-eight House representatives cosponsored the bill. In my research, however, I’ve found there’s not much objective analysis of the plan. Google search pages are filled with links to leftist reports, from think-tank analyses to opinion pieces, praising the scheme as a practical blueprint for saving the planet. So whatever you do, don’t take this plan lightly.
In Politico, Michael Grunwald recalls that the GND has been tried before. As if to prove my point that Obama is no moderate, Grunwald notes that Obama “signed a prototype Green New Deal into law in February 2009, pouring an unprecedented $90 billion into clean electricity, renewable fuels, advanced batteries, energy efficiency, a smarter grid, and a slew of other green initiatives.”29 Look how that turned out with Solyndra—the solar panel manufacturer that went bankrupt after receiving half a billion dollars in federal loan guarantees—and the rest of Obama’s green boondoggles! Grunwald says we may not have realized what Obama was really doing because the green scheme was hidden in Obama’s $800 billion stimulus package. “People don’t understand how forward-leaning the stimulus was on climate issues,” said Congresswoman Kathy Castor.30 “There was an incredible amount of green stuff in it that people didn’t see,” says progressive activist Sean McElwee.31
So what exactly is the GND? The congressional resolution, sponsored by AOC and Senator Edward J. Markey, declared that it is the federal government’s “duty to create a Green New Deal” to accomplish specified goals “through a 10-year mobilization.”32 An “overview” of the resolution stated, “The Green New Deal resolution [is] a 10-year plan to mobilize every aspect of American society at a scale not seen since Word War 2 to achieve net-zero greenhouse gas emissions and create economic prosperity for all.”33
The GND resolution’s “mobilization” includes, among other things:
“Guaranteeing a job with a family-sustaining wage, adequate family and medical leave, paid vacations, and retirement security to all people of the United States.”
“Providing all people of the United States with—(i) high-quality health care; (ii) affordable, safe, and adequate housing; (iii) economic security; and (iv) access to clean water, clean air, healthy and affordable food, and nature.”
“Providing resources, training, and high-quality education, including higher education, to all people of the United States.”
“Meeting 100 percent of the power demand in the United States through clean, renewable, and zero-emission energy sources.”
“Upgrading all existing buildings in the United States and building new buildings to achieve maximal energy efficiency, water efficiency, safety, affordability, comfort, and durability, including through electrification.”
“Overhauling transportation systems in the United States to eliminate pollution and greenhouse gas emissions from the transportation sector as much as is technologically feasible, including through investment in—(i) zero-emission vehicle infrastructure and manufacturing; (ii) clean, affordable, and accessible public transportation; and (iii) high-speed rail.”34
Try to wrap your mind around this. The GND would summarily scrap America’s oil and gas drilling industry and its hundreds of thousands of employees just when this industry and its shale revolution have made us a net exporter of oil for the first time in seventy-five years.35 America is now the largest oil-producing nation in the world.36 Not Russia. Not Saudi Arabia—the United States of America. Donald Trump launched this revolution by reversing leftist environmental policies and unleashing fracking, opening the Keystone Pipeline, the Dakota Pipeline, and ANWAR. The GND would undo all this progress by banning all fossil fuels—all oil and natural gas, and nuclear energy—the most affordable sources of energy and prosperity. It would, according to the sponsors’ overview, “totally overhaul transportation by massively expanding electric vehicle manufacturing, build charging stations everywhere, build out high-speed rail at a scale where air travel stops becoming necessary, create affordable public transit available to all, with [sic] goal to replace every combustion-engine vehicle.”37 You read that correctly—no more planes and no more gas-powered cars.
“Right from the outset, the six-page document laying out the ‘Green New Deal’ seemed like a joke,” quipped columnist Joseph Curl, “something a few devious wags in the Republican Party whipped up to parody an expansive environmental plan conjured by Democratic Socialist Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez…. Apparently, a sixth-grader was given a homework assignment that read: ‘What would you do if you had a gazillion dollars to make the world shiny and perfect?’ ”38 President Trump captured the absurd grandiosity of the plan in a tweet a few days after its release. “I think it is very important for the Democrats to press forward with their Green New Deal,” Trump tweeted. “It would be great for the so-called ‘Carbon Footprint’ to permanently eliminate all Planes, Cars, Cows, Oil, Gas & the Military—even if no other country would do the same. Brilliant!”39
But in fairness to AOC, she’s trying her best not to be unrealistic. After all, according to a document released by her office, “We set a goal to get to net-zero, rather than zero emissions, in 10 years because we aren’t sure we’ll be able to fully get rid of farting cows and airplanes that fast, but we think we can ramp up renewable manufacturing and power production, retrofit every building in America, build the smart grid, overhaul transportation and agriculture, plant lots of trees and restore our ecosystem to get to net-zero.”40 On another occasion, she suggested the world will end within twelve years. So what’s the point of saving it? Might as well just have one big good-bye party. Can you see why Curl thought the GND seemed like a Republican parody of environmental nuttiness?
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��m not sure where PETA stands on getting rid of all farting cows, though they’d probably be thrilled with eliminating airplanes. But just think about retrofitting every home and building in this country (there are 136 million homes) for energy efficiency!41 Imagine waving your magic wand and creating a good-paying job for every American, “high-quality education, including higher education and trade schools,” and “economic security for all who are unable or unwilling to work.”42 Why didn’t President Trump think of that? Don’t overlook the word “unwilling” in that sentence. As a thought experiment, let’s assume you think it’s moral for the government, using taxpayers’ money, to support sluggards who refuse to support themselves. In your wildest dreams, do you think there are enough simultaneously stupid and industrious people in America to pull that off? Yet many on the left treat this absurd fantasy as a legitimate economic and environmental blueprint.
As for the plan’s price tag, “I think we really need to get to $10 trillion to have a shot,” said AOC. “I know it’s a ton. I don’t think anyone wants to spend that amount of money… but it’s just the fact of the scenario.”43 Well, if $10 trillion is a “ton,” then a more realistic estimate of the cost by the American Action Forum—from $51 trillion to $93 trillion—is between five and nine tons.44 A study by Power the Future and the Competitive Enterprise Institute calculated that the GND would cost a typical American household more than $70,000 in its first year, $45,000 per year for the next four years, and $37,000 a year thereafter.45
But here’s the kicker: the Green New Deal would have barely any impact on the climate. In fact, even if the United States outlawed all carbon emissions, the earth’s temperature would decrease by less than 0.2 degrees Celsius by the year 2100. If the entire world joined in—which it won’t (major emitters like India and China are reluctant to sabotage their own economies)—the temperature would decrease by less than 0.4 degrees.46 These stunning facts tell us all we need to know about AOC and her band of climate zealots. If we do everything they demand, we’ll end up with totalitarian socialism and the same “climate emergency” they claim exists today. And it’s a safe bet that even the vast societal transformation envisioned by the GND is not the end point but just the beginning. As Elizabeth Warren exclaimed at a CNN town hall event on February 20, 2020, the Green New Deal “is not enough.”47
For his part, Biden, under pressure from the left, released a twenty-two-page climate plan in June 2019, embracing the Green New Deal “framework.” Though some leftists didn’t believe Biden went far enough because his initial proposal called for eliminating the nation’s carbon footprint by 2050 instead of AOC’s and Markey’s 2030 deadline, the Washington Post reported that his plan “adopts the rhetoric—and at times, many of the actual policy proposals—of the Green New Deal resolution.”48
Demonstrating both his tendency to pander to his party’s radicals and that he still hasn’t fully repented for his history of plagiarism, Biden admitted through his campaign that portions of his climate plan had been lifted word for word, without credit, from publications of environmental groups.49 As the campaign proceeded Biden drifted further left on the issue, suggesting the Democrats push for Green New Deal provisions in the second coronavirus stimulus bill. “We’re going to have an opportunity, I believe, in the next round [of economic aid] here to use… my Green New Deal to be able to generate both [sic] economic growth as consistent with the kind of infusion of monies we need into the system to keep it going,” said Biden.50
MEDICARE FOR ALL AND OTHER FREEBIES
The GND’s promise to provide “high-quality health care” for “all people of the United States” is laughable way before you analyze its probable cost. You simply cannot legislatively guarantee high-quality universal care, when all proposals promising it decimate supply and demand and free market incentives that lead to higher quality at lower costs. But when you consider the projected costs, you’re entering the Twilight Zone. Bernie Sanders took a stab at socialized medicine by concocting his Medicare for All plan, which would cost an inconceivable $32 trillion over a decade, according to the Urban Institute, a liberal group whose estimates are nearly identical to those of the Mercatus Center at George Mason University.51
Elizabeth Warren proposed an arguably more ambitious Medicare for All plan that some say could cost $52 trillion over a decade. Others estimate the price at $34 trillion,52 but why quibble over a mere $18 trillion when Warren insisted her plan would not entail any tax increase on middle-class families?53 Both plans would be government run and provide comprehensive health coverage for every American with almost zero deductibles, copayments, or premiums. “At the heart of the ‘Medicare for all’ proposals championed by Senator Bernie Sanders and many Democrats is a revolutionary idea: Abolish private health insurance,” wrote the New York Times’ Reed Abelson and Margot Anger-Katz.54 “There’s no precedent in American history that compares to this,” said Paul Starr, a sociology professor at Princeton University.55
Biden initially criticized the cost of Medicare for All, proposing instead a public option to compete with private health insurance. After Sanders’s withdrawal from the race, Biden predictably moved left on this issue and suggested lowering the Medicare age to sixty. That wasn’t far enough to spare him harsh criticism from AOC and other leftists whose support is critical to rally the party behind Biden. “The trouble is, of course, that even if rank-and-file Democrats don’t act as though they think there’s a big difference between [Medicare for All] and Biden’s public-option scheme, the progressive opinion leaders they need to unite the Democratic Party most definitely do, and, like Sanders and AOC, they’re not going to be quiet about it,” notes liberal writer Ed Kilgore.56 He adds that Biden must begin to make “serious concessions to the left on health-care policy or let it be known quietly that he’s gone as far as he can.”
Disturbingly, Kilgore observes that a silver lining of the coronavirus pandemic is that it’s created a “new context” for “policy proposals thought to be too extravagant earlier.”57 This is how progressives think—as Rahm Emanuel famously said, “Never let a crisis go to waste.” Biden already exploited this “new context” in pushing for Green New Deal provisions in the stimulus bill, as noted. As his party’s leader, he can never be trusted to reject Medicare for All, even if he doesn’t endorse it during the election campaign.
Of course, the Democrats’ fiscally ruinous proposals don’t end with Medicare for All. Warren also proposed “a bold new Universal Child Care and Early Learning plan” to “guarantee high-quality child care and early education for every child in American from birth to school age.” She claimed, “In the wealthiest country on the planet, access to affordable and high-quality child care and early education should be a right, not a privilege reserved for the rich.” Under her plan, free child care would be provided to all families with income below 200 percent of the federal poverty line. A family with income above the line would pay no more than 7 percent of its income.58 The plan would cost $700 billion over ten years, which Warren would finance with her new wealth tax.59
Sanders proposed a plan for tuition-free college, which would cost $807 billion over a decade, according to the Tax Policy Center. Warren and Sanders had separate plans to cancel all student debt, which would cost a staggering $1.6 trillion60—though perversely, the outrageous price tags of the Green New Deal and Medicare for All make this scheme seem cheap by comparison. And that’s to say nothing of its unfairness. One voter at an Iowa campaign event gave Warren a piece of his mind. “I just wanted to ask one question. My daughter is getting out of school. I’ve saved all my money. She doesn’t have any student loans. Am I going to get my money back?” Warren responded, “Of course not.” The man shot back, “So you’re going to pay for people who didn’t save any money and those of us who did the right thing get screwed.” Warren had no answer beyond huffing and puffing.61
We need more such displays of common sense. Democrats preach about fairness but don’t know the first thing abo
ut it. This man’s indignation resonates with middle-class voters, and the Democrats have no answer for it—so we must frame the Democrats’ giveaways just as this outraged voter did. Further proving his pandering flexibility, as soon as Sanders suspended his presidential bid, Biden also said he would erase undergraduate student debt for anyone earning $125,000 a year or less.62
Many of the Democrats’ other plans are similarly couched in terms of fairness but wholly unfair, unworkable, and fiscally catastrophic. Their federal job guarantee for every American at the increased minimum wage of $15 per hour plus benefits would cost almost $7 trillion over a decade, according to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, a liberal group.63 Additionally, economists have long agreed that big minimum wage hikes harm the people they’re designed to help by incentivizing businesses to cut their workforce—the last thing we need as we try to recover from the economic damage of the coronavirus. Then there was Sanders’s Social Security expansion plan, at a projected cost of nearly $200 billion over the next decade, and $270 billion for his paid family and medical leave program.64
It must be easy for socialists to sleep at night. If you think money grows on government trees, why not promise that the state will provide, free of charge, for all the main expenses in a person’s entire life and guarantee a job to boot? Of course, no government on earth has the funds to pay those expenses, especially when you consider the many millions of newcomers who would be entitled to these benefits if the Democrats succeed in abolishing the border.
FINANCING THE INSANITY
As I’ve told you, the Democrats view the economy as a zero-sum game and legislate as if their policies will have no impact on taxpayers’ incentives to produce, save, or spend. So to them, it’s a matter of simple math (more like Common Core math), where any amount of government spending can be financed by tax increases. They recognize virtually no legal or practical restraints on taxing and spending—the only criterion is whether it will serve their ends.