White House adviser Kellyanne Conway warned Democrats not to repackage the Green New Deal climate-change legislation as “infrastructure” during a Tuesday meeting with President Trump.
Democrats requested the meeting to discuss areas of potential cooperation, and White House officials this week said Trump has an open mind and no specific infrastructure proposal himself.
Conway spoke on the White House driveway after congressional Democrats published a Monday letter to Trump that expressed interest in discussing “risk mitigation of our current infrastructure to deal with climate change.”
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., will attend the meeting, their first with Trump since the release of special counsel Robert Mueller’s Russia report.
Conway, speaking dismissively of the Green New Deal released this year by Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., and Sen. Ed Markey, D-Mass., said, “that should not be brought to the White House today under the guise of infrastructure.”
“If it couldn’t get support from Democrats in the United States Senate, it certainly is not going to get support in the Trump White House,” Conway said.
Conway said Trump would instead be interested in discussing issues such as streamlining infrastructure permitting, private-public partnerships, and new frontiers of innovation such as 5G and artificial intelligence.
Last month, the Green New Deal failed in a 57-0 vote in the Senate. Most Democrats boycotted the vote because it was doomed to fail in the Republican-held chamber. Republicans said they did not want to endorse a radical package calling for the elimination of fossil fuel use.
