FreedomWorks’ Dumpster Fire of the Month for March 2019: “Green New Deal” Resolution, H.Res. 109 and S.Res. 59

FreedomWorks’ activist-chosen dumpster fire of the month for March 2019 is the “Green New Deal” Resolution, H.Res. 109 and S.Res. 59, introduced by Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y) and Sen. Ed Markey (D-Mass.). The resolution, touted by the progressive left as a “solution” to the “climate crisis,” is no more than an overt attempt to entirely upend the concept of liberty in America. By turning our economy into a socialist’s dream, the Green New Deal would ruin what we have of a free-market society here in America and put us on a fast track to collectivism.

Last week’s live stream featured four bills — the SALT Act, the State Public Option Act, the Protecting Americans with Pre-existing Conditions Act, and the Green New Deal Resolution. Once again, of course — especially for the third bill — these bill demonstrate why short titles are often incredibly misleading. Despite their names, these bills contain provisions that would raise individual tax rates, implement government-run healthcare and deny states’ the ability to offer the most health insurance choices to their residents, and spend nearly $100 trillion over ten years to eliminate air travel and provide jobs for those in our country who are “unwilling to work.”

Without a doubt, the left grows more radical every day. As our activists pointed out, the Green New Deal is particularly absurd. Completely outside of the realm of the possible and seemingly straight out of a dystopian novel, the Green New Deal proposes to implement wholly government-run healthcare, transition completely to renewable energy sources, offer “free” college for all, and create a federal jobs guarantee.

The radical plan has been estimated by the American Action Forum, a group headed by Dr. Doug Holtz-Eakin who is a former director of the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office, to cost as much as $93 trillion total in the next ten years, should its policies become law. This breaks down to $600,000 per American household over that time.

A large portion of this cost, an estimated $36 trillion, comes from the promise of the Green New Deal to “provid[e] all people of the United States with…high quality health care,” which is chiefly proposed by the left in the form of Medicare for All. Just last week, even Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) said of Medicare for All, “by the way, how’s it gonna be paid for?”

The immense cost is not the Green New Deal’s only issue. It doesn’t represent serious policy, and contains absurd “goals” outlined in a FAQ sheet on the bill. The FAQ was so absurd that Rep. Ocasio-Cortez and her staff removed it from her website shortly after publishing it. According to the FAQ, the Green New Deal’s policy ends include reducing U.S. emissions to 0 by 2030, “upgrad[ing] and replac[ing] every building in the US” to be energy-efficient, replac[ing] every combustible-engine vehicle,” and identifying “new emission sources and creat[ing] solutions to eliminate those emissions,” among other unrealistic devastating ends that would be catastrophic for society.

Needless to say, when even the Democratic, liberal Speaker of the House thinks her own party’s primary proposals are too far left, you know it’s bad. However, the resolution has 89 cosponsors in the House and 11 cosponsors in the Senate. Notably, many candidates who have already said they are running for President in 2020 are signers on the resolution, including Sens. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), Kirsten Gillibrand (D-N.Y.), Kamala Harris (D-Calif.), Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.), and Cory Booker (D-N.J.).

Of these candidates and any other lawmakers and individuals who support the thoughtless, un-American “Green New Deal,” it should be asked: Why do you support a plan that would take such significant portions of the largely free country we have and forcibly nationalize them — from transportation to jobs to the very homes we live in? Do you still believe that America should be the land of the free?