Senate Republicans will force Democrats and several of their presidential candidates to go on record as soon as next week on a Green New Deal plan that has attracted ridicule and split the party.
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., is fast-tracking a Green New Deal resolution through the Senate, enabling a vote as early as next week.
The resolution was authored by rising freshman star Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., and longtime climate advocate Sen. Ed Markey, D-Mass. It is nonbinding but calls for Congress to take the lead in ridding the nation of fossil fuels in the next few decades, among other dramatic environmental and economic changes.
The plan to eradicate fossil fuels is considered so drastic, Senate Minority Whip Dick Durbin, D-Ill., asked Markey after reading the resolution, “What in the heck is this?”
Some Democrats are distancing themselves, but others will likely back the resolution, including a bevy of Democrats running for president.
“I’m proud to co-sponsor @AOC and @EdMarkey’s Green New Deal,” Sen. Kamala Harris, D-Calif., who is running for president, said on Twitter. “We must aggressively tackle climate change which poses an existential threat to our nation.”
Other presidential hopefuls backing the deal include Sens. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., and Kristen Gillibrand, D-N.Y., as does Julian Castro and Rep. Tulsi Gabbard, D-Hawaii.
But McConnell is eager to put Senate Democrats into a potentially difficult political position by forcing them to take a side. “We’ll give everyone an opportunity to go on record and see how they feel about the Green New Deal,” McConnell said earlier this month.
It’s not yet clear if the vote will create the wide split McConnell is looking for. Some Democrats, like Joe Manchin of West Virginia, have indicated they will vote against it, and at least some Democrats are likely to vote “no” when forced to decide.
But the upcoming 2020 election is also a factor. Sen. Amy Klobuchar, D-Minn., who entered the presidential race as a party moderate, hedged when asked on Fox News whether she backs the Green New Deal.
“The Green New Deal? I see it as aspirational,” Klobuchar said on Fox News. Klobuchar said she would vote yes on the resolution but not necessarily specific legislation aimed at implementing the goals laid out in the nonbinding measure.
“If it got down to the nitty-gritty of an actual legislation, as opposed to, here’s some goals we have, that would be different for me,” she said.
Democrats stumbled as they rolled out the Green New Deal in a way that allowed Republicans to mock the plan as pie-in-the-sky. It was accompanied by a fact sheet produced by Ocasio-Cortez’s staff that called for eliminating the need for air travel, retrofitting every house and building to green energy standards, and reforming the nation’s agricultural practices to eliminate cows.
Ocasio-Cortez removed the document, but Republicans plan to keep touting its radical provisions as the Senate heads toward a vote. But Ocasio-Cortez this week didn’t back down from her calls to curb methane-producing cows and the proposal to end environmental damage caused by large-scale farming.
She said on a Showtime comedy show this week, “We need to take a look at factory farming, and maybe we shouldn’t be eating a hamburger for breakfast, lunch, and dinner.”
Meanwhile, Senate Democratic leaders know the GOP is setting a trap and call the vote on the resolution a political stunt designed to split them.
“Since Republicans took control of this chamber in 2015, they have not brought a single Republican bill to meaningfully reduce carbon emissions to the floor of the Senate,” said Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y.. “Not one bill. Republicans have controlled this chamber for over four years. Not a single bill to significantly reduce carbon emissions.”
