Blunt slams Democrats’ costly Green New Deal

This week, Missouri U.S. Senator Roy Blunt spoke on the Senate floor about Democrats’ Green New Deal, laying out how the legislation goes far beyond the mainstream and could cost up to $94 trillion over the next 10 years – the equivalent of $65,000 per household, per year. Read excerpts from his speech or watch it in full below:

“Our friends on the other side of the aisle introduced a resolution calling on the federal government to adopt what they call the Green New Deal. Now, from my point of view, the legislation is pretty far outside the mainstream in what it’s proposing and how it’s proposing the problems that we should be debating. I don’t have any problem with that – should be solved. Even though it seems pretty far outside the mainstream of thought, at least 12 of our colleagues in the Senate have cosponsored it. …

“So let’s talk for just a couple of minutes about what that bill actually says. One of the things it does, it calls for the United States to use 100% renewable energy by 2030. … [It] says basically that we’d want to have a zero carbon dioxide emissions by then. I know there was some discussion in the rolling out of this bill that that would mean ground transportation and air transportation would either be eliminated or minimized, at least the way we travel right now would be. …

“You know, even President Obama’s former science advisor says that this is not feasible. Harvard University professor John Holdren was quoted in “The New York Times” saying, quote, as a technologist studying this problem for 50 years, I don’t think we can do it. End quote. So that’s a pretty good source that indicates what we’re talking about here can’t happen. So that big headline goal appears to be impossible but we probably could debate it anyway. …

“The rest of the legislation goes really beyond things that don’t relate to the environment. There’s a laundry list of policies that appear to be popular right now. And in the so-called progressive discussion, one is a single-payer health system and the other is a federal job guarantee. The talking points suggested that that would be a federal job guarantee for people who can’t work or aren’t willing to work. … There’s a provision calling for, quote, repairing the historic oppression of youth. That’s sort of what this whole Green New Deal seems to focus on, accepting responsibility in a debate for things that really don’t make the kind of sense you’d want them to make as you move toward legislation. Doesn’t really say what the historical oppression of youth was. Probably that’s not related to the economy or the environment or the greenness of the Green New Deal.

“But even if we agree that these ideas are good ideas, the other question is how much is it going to cost. The American Action Forum looked at the biggest parts of the legislation, and they estimated that the total would run anywhere from $51 trillion to $94 trillion over ten years. Put this in perspective, the Congress right now appropriates about $1.5 trillion a year. … If the estimates of the Green New Deal are right, that would suddenly become $5 trillion a year to $9 trillion a year. … That works out to about $65,000 per family per year. That would probably be more government than we could afford, but that’s how it works out. There’s nothing that talks about how families are supposed to come up with their share of the bill.

“While some of the ideas in the Green New Deal are Medicare for all or a job for everybody guaranteed by the government sounds like a good idea. I don’t think they’re going to stand the test of the debate. I think that’s one of the reasons that maybe the other side doesn’t want to have the debate.”