Rep. Mo Brooks, R-Alabama, denounced the “Green New Deal” last Thursday that Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-New York, proposed.
“Socialist Democrat’s so-called “Green New Deal” is a raw deal for Americans,” Brooks said. “The proposal amounts to a vague manifesto of radical Socialist Democrat policies that promises ‘massive government intervention’ and the ‘economic transformation’ of America. History tells us, Socialism is a failed economic system that results in untold suffering and human misery where ever it is implemented. In contrast, America is the greatest nation in world history thanks to our free-enterprise economic system.”
Ocasio-Cortez and Sen. Ed Markey, D-Massachusetts, wrote the plan, which said “a new national social, industrial and economic mobilization on a scale not seen since World War II and the New Deal” is an opportunity to tackle systemic injustices toward minority groups, create millions of high-wage jobs and “provide unprecedented levels of prosperity and economic security for all people of the United States.”
Its proposals include “net-zero greenhouse gas emissions through a fair and just transition for all communities and workers,” job creation, infrastructure investment, guarantees of clean water, healthy food and sustainable environment and a curiously undefined “access to nature.”
“The sun is setting on the dirty energy of the past,” Markey said. “Today marks the dawn of a new era of climate action. A Green New Deal is about jobs, and it is about justice. It would be the greatest blue-collar jobs program in a generation and repair the historic oppression of frontline and vulnerable communities that have born the worst burdens of our fossil fuel economy, all while saving the planet. Our Green New Deal resolution outlines an historic ten-year mobilization that will mitigate climate emissions and build climate resiliency. We can create high-quality jobs and enforce labor standards, guarantee rights to retirement security and health care, and conduct inclusive decision making in this Green New Deal. I thank Rep. Ocasio-Cortez for her partnership and leadership on this resolution, and I look forward to elevating the issue of climate change as the highest of Congressional priorities.”
The Republican National Committee called it a “Socialist wish list” that would kill at least a million jobs and disrupt global trade while costing trillions.
The Democrats’ plan would especially affect Alabama where automobile manufacturing, coal mining, cattle farming, oil and natural gas and aerospace are all major industries. The unprecedented centralization of the American economy would affect millions of Americans, and likely there would be states’ rights and individual property rights issues that would have to be addressed by the courts if the federal government attempted to implement the plan.
Congressman Mo Brooks has been a staunch opponent of socialism.
President Donald Trump told Congress in the State of the Union that America will never be a Socialist nation.
