The Senate vs. The Green New Deal vs. Reality

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) recently decided to vote on something important. No, not the release of the newly finished Muller Report — that would make him look ridiculous. Instead, he wished to vote on Rep. Cortez’s newly announced Green New Deal.

First off, this is not how the Green New Deal actually works. It is intended to be a manifesto for how a world would run many years from now in order to both stabilize the economy and attack climate change. However, McConnell asked for a vote on it as if it was a bill, which is just as nonsense as voting on the official platform of the Republican Party.

How did this go? Not a single Senator voted in favor of the pretend legislation. Every Republican voted against it, and every Democrat who didn’t vote against it chose to abstain from voting. Obviously, this was an attempt by McConnell and the Republicans to make Cortez — and therefore left wing ideas like caring about the environment and economic stability — look silly.

This idea wasn’t even always controversial for Republicans, it use to be common sense. Republican President Theodore Roosevelt engaged in trust busting, called for minimum wage in his 1912 platform while running for president as a progressive, and put a large amount of the environment under government control — including by creating the national parks. President Richard Nixon started the EPA which helped lead to the creation of the Clean Air and Water Acts. Nixon also appointed William Ruckelsaus to be the first director of the EPA, who went to congress and said the first order of business was to ban DDT. He was later reappointed under president Reagan.

This isn’t even controversial for most Republicans today. A few months ago, Republican Mayor of Georgetown, Texas, Dale Ross, announced he is going to run his town entirely on green energy to former Vice President Al Gore. Many Republicans — that are not allowed on the MSM or in Congress, of course — are concerned about Climate Change. 60% of Americans overall believe Climate Change is man-made, almost all believe we must do something.

However, Climate deniers still have a few arguments left up there sleeves, other than the fact that sometimes there’s a cold day. The most prevalent one being that everything is blamed on Climate Change these days. This is a claim that has been used by people like Tucker Carlson, and was recently a “got you” on Steven Crowder’s website.

Both droughts and hurricanes can be blamed on climate change, as neither should happen. Both record high and low temperatures can be blamed on climate change, as we should not be setting records on temperature year after year.

Still, others wish the Green New Deal had used Nuclear energy instead of what we will call “natural energy,” (solar, wind, water, etc). However, this falls apart when realize nuclear energy is not renewable, meaning we will run out of it at some point. Natural energy, however, is renewable, meaning we have an unlimited supply of it.

Yet, some oppose the “New Deal,” part as it brings memory of Republican hate figure, Franklin Delano Roosevelt. So let’s look at some of the main points of his biggest critics.

First off, many don’t believe he should have ran for a 3rd or 4th term. The argument this is “tyranny” or “unjustified” is nonsense. There were no term-limits during his time (and that’s ignoring how term limits — the idea the state can choose who can and can’t run for office — is much more authoritarian than running for a 3rd term) therefore, he had every right to do so. For that matter, these people always seem to ignore the people still choose to elect his to a 3rd and 4th term. Let me repeat that: The people of the United States did not care how many times he ran for office, they just wanted him to be in the White House.

The second claim is that the New Deal didn’t end — in fact, some argue he even prolonged — The Great Depression. There is a large amount of evidence both ways which could fill an entire book, however I will argue it is no coincidence that a three decade long prosperity occurred after the New Deal programs.

Others will go with irrelevant claims, such as FDR’s interment camps for Japanese-Americans. This was both irrelevant to his economic policy and completely normal to do in wartime, so I will not treat this claim with anything more than dismissal it deserves.

So there’s a basic debunking of the most common claims against the Green New Deal, while individual valid criticisms do exist, they aren’t the ones screamed the most. Instead, many prefer to use the long debunked claims against this idea as they are unable to come up with any legitimate criticism and would prefer to use fear tactics.