The Patriot Post® · $93 Trillion Green New Deal Means National Bankruptcy
The American Action Forum (AAF) released its study of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s (AOC) widely panned “Green New Deal” (GND) as it sought to calculate the actual cost of her plan. Sen. John Barrasso (R-WY), chairman of the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works, put it bluntly: “The Green New Deal would bankrupt the nation.” He added, “On the upper end, every American household would have to pay $65,000 per year to foot the bill. The total price tag would be $93 trillion over 10 years. That is roughly four times the value of all Fortune 500 companies combined. That’s no deal.”
The AAF broke down the 10-year cost of implementing the GND’s major goals. The following is a list of some of those goals and their estimated total cost and cost per household:
Low-carbon Electric Grid: $5.4 trillion; $39,000
Net Zero Emissions Transportation System: $1.3 to $2.7 trillion; $9,000 to $20,000
Guaranteed Jobs: $6.8 to $44.6 trillion; $49,000 to $322,000
Universal Health Care: $36 trillion; $260,000
Guaranteed Green Housing: $1.6 to $4.2 trillion; $4,000 to $12,000
The Washington Examiner’s Tiana Lowe observes, “Even without killing all the farting cows and eliminating every last car on the road, the Green New Deal will cost anywhere from 2.5 to 4.5 times the amount of the entire United States GDP.” In fact, global GDP is estimated to be less than $80 trillion.
One of the glaring ironies with the GND and AOC’s loudly expressed alarm over climate change — the “Millennials’ World War II,” as she has bloviated — is the absence of any promotion of the most practical, reliable, efficient, and lowest-cost source for green energy: nuclear power. As Barrasso argued, “Instead, we should promote innovation to reduce carbon-dioxide emissions. Promising new technologies like advanced nuclear power, carbon capture, and carbon utilization held the key to significant emissions reductions. We can lower our emissions without crashing our economy.”
The truth is that the goal behind the GND push is not actually fighting climate change; rather it’s an attempt to usurp America’s free-enterprise system and replace it with totalitarian socialism. That’s why leftists like AOC love to promote “free” stuff but never freedom. Individual Liberty presents the biggest threat to their lust for power.