Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) and other left-wing politicians are hoping to create a Civil Climate Corps modeled after Franklin D. Roosevelt’s Civilian Conservation Corps. The redux would have fighting so-called climate change as its mission with a $10 billion taxpayer-funded price tag.
Ocasio-Cortez tweeted:
The Civilian Climate Corps aims to employ 1.5 million young Americans – putting them to work remediating blight, maintaining our parks and natural lands – and ultimately put them on a path to a long-term career, providing support like student loan relief and child/eldercare.
“Much like the CCC of the New Deal-era, the GND’s Civilian Climate Corps closes the gap between those who need work and work that needs to be done,” she tweeted.
Much like the CCC of the New Deal-era, the GND's Civilian Climate Corps closes the gap between those who need work and work that needs to be done. https://t.co/4SVPP2NlSz
— Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (@RepAOC) May 4, 2021
Ocasio-Cortez’s partner in introducing the radical Green New Deal, Sen. Ed Markey (D-MA), is in charge of the Senate version of the legislation. He told Fox News the Civilian Climate Corps for Jobs and Justice Act would be part of Biden’s $2.3 trillion American Jobs Plan.
‘The Corporation for National and Community Service has the ability to recruit, select, fund, and oversee 1,500,000 members of service corps by 2025 to complete important projects across the entire country to help address the climate crisis,” the bill reads.
Ocasio-Cortez and Markey — along with other sponsors, including failed presidential candidates Bernie Sanders and Kristen Gillibrand — also hope to insert a minimum wage of $15 for these new workers.
The Daily Mail filled in some details about the proposed legislation:
They are also seeking to get corps members other benefits like child care, counseling and a $25,000 grant per year they can put toward student debt or future education. They are hoping the climate corps will create a path toward a future career in the ‘clean economy workforce.’
The workers would receive on-the-job training and work with community groups, including unions, on initiatives to ‘reduce carbon emissions, enable a transition to renewable energy, build healthier and more resilient communities, implement conservation projects with proven climate benefits, and help communities recover from climate disasters.’
At least 50 per cent of the funding – and workforce – is reserved for ‘environmental justice’ while another 10 per cent in funding will be allocated for tribal communities. The lawmakers proposing the climate corps are seeking in the bill ‘[t]o amend the National and Community Service Act of 1990 to establish a Civilian Climate Corps to help communities respond to climate change and transition to a clean economy, and for other purposes.’
But Dan Brouillette, the former Secretary of the Department of Energy under former President Donald Trump, told Fox Business that the proposal has nothing to do with climate change.
“I think it’s important for your viewers to understand that what this is not about is climate change,” Brouillette said. “Let me say that again: what this is not about is climate change.” He went on to say:
This is about creating voters and creating jobs, and affecting what amounts to be public financing of elections and reelections for Democratic candidates all across the country. The energy industry, in fact, has led the efforts to produce cleaner fuels, to adopt technologies like carbon capture and utilization and sequestration. Those types of innovative technologies need to continue to come to market, and they’re being done today by the private industry.
“There’s nothing in there that addresses the real issues that we face, both in energy production or in climate sequestration or carbon sequestration, I should say,” Brouillette said. “Again, as I’ll point out, these are efforts by some in Congress to move funds, to move money into districts that they control for the purposes of their own reelection. That’s what they’re doing. Let’s just call it what it is.”
Follow Penny Starr on Twitter or send news tips to pstarr@breitbart.com
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