The 3 reasons that AOC’s Green New Deal is staggering
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Interesting opinion piece in left-leaning The Hill
Merrill Matthews is a resident scholar with the Institute for Policy Innovation which professes itself to be “a non-profit, non-partisan public policy think tank.”
Merrill opines:
“We had such high hopes (that the Green New Deal) would save our planet; save our economy; and, most of all, save our party from the coming November red tsunami.”
Note: Doesn’t sound non-partisan to me.
But he concedes that: “There is very little chance of resurrecting the Green New Deal (now or after the November elections.”
He asks rhetorically: “Where did things go off track?”
Speaking some quiet truth out loud, Merrill soberly cites 2 strategic miscalculations that climate controllers have made:
- Pushing for higher gas prices
- Relying on unelected bureaucrats & courts
Taking those one at a time…
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High gas prices
One of the necessary ingredients for the Green New Deal was high gasoline prices.
We need those high prices to push millions of reluctant Americans to embrace electric vehicles.
When we surveyed the pubic over the years, many people (44 percent in a 2018 survey) said they would be willing to pay somewhat higher gasoline prices to fight climate change.
So, we thought the recent jump in gasoline prices would be, if not welcomed, at least tolerated.
But we were dead wrong.
It turns out that high gasoline prices hit low-income families the hardest — the very people we progressives claim we want to help.
More importantly, those high prices have enraged most voters.
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Unelected Bureaucrats & Courts
We thought that we could still depend on federal agencies and the Supreme Court to impose what couldn’t pass Congress.
We knew it would be difficult getting the Green New Deal through Congress, even with Democratic majorities in the House and Senate.
Especially since we included so many items that aren’t actually related to the environment, like higher wages and social justice and equity demands.
For years it seemed the Supreme Court was willing to interpret the law favorably for us. That era appears to be over.
As Justice Neil Gorsuch wrote, “The Court does not purport to pass on the wisdom of the EPA’s course. It acknowledges only that agency officials have sought to resolve a major policy question without clear legislative authorization to do so.”
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The “so what?”
Merrill says:
If we want sweeping environmental reforms, we will have to turn to our democratically elected representatives in Congress or the state legislatures to pass them.
That means if we’re to make progress on our environmental agenda, we will have to sit down with the other side and see where we can find common ground.
That’s a tall order.
But if we really think the environment is important, maybe we should try to do it the way the framers of the Constitution envisioned and rely on the legislative branch rather than the judicial branch to make our laws.
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My take:
None of the above is surprising “new news”.
But, I credit Merrill with speaking the truth out loud … that sky high gas prices and circumventing legislative processes were (are?) part of the plan … all along.
Sometimes, you reap what you sow…
The Homa Files 