Kamala Harris, Other 2020 Democrat Contenders Back ‘Green New Deal’

Kamala Harris and Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez (Associated Press and AP / Paul Sancya)
Associated Press and AP / Paul Sancya

Sen. Kamala Harris (D-CA) co-sponsored the “Green New Deal” legislation introduced by Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) on Thursday, even though the plan had already been widely mocked.

Almost every other candidate for the Democratic Party’s presidential nomination in 2020 has also endorsed a “Green New Deal,” though Harris appeared to be the first to endorse Ocasio-Cortez’s specific legislation.

Update: Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) has also endorsed the Green New Deal:

The bill released by Ocasio-Cortez and Sen. Ed Markey (D-MA) is a socialist wish list. It calls for moving the U.S. to 100% renewable energy within ten years — while at the same time creating a government-guaranteed job for every American. The bill proposes phasing out air travel, “upgrading all existing buildings in the United States,” and other radical proposals — without any plan to pay for the “transformation” of the entire American economy.

The proposal would require the federal government to ignore deficits and, critics note, to print new money. And according to talking points Ocasio-Cortez is distributing, the Green New Deal will also provide “[e]conomic security for all who are unable or unwilling to work” (emphasis added).

As David Harsanyi of The Federalist notes: “A number of Democratic Party presidential hopefuls — including Cory Booker, Kamala Harris, Elizabeth Warren, Kirsten Gillibrand, Julián Castro, and Beto O’Rourke, for starters — have already endorsed or expressed support for the “Green New Deal” (GND).” They endorsed the “Green New Deal” before Thursday’s proposal had been released, but Ocasio-Cortez had been hinting at its details since 2018.

One potential Democratic candidate, former New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg, said last week that he would propose his own pragmatic version of the “Green New Deal.” “I’m a little bit tired of listening to things that are pie in the sky, that we never are going to pass or never are going to afford,” he said, as quoted by the Washington Examiner.

Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News. He is a winner of the 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. He is also the co-author of How Trump Won: The Inside Story of a Revolution, which is available from Regnery. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.

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