AOC’s top aide admits Green New Deal about the economy, not climate

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s chief of staff recently admitted that the Green New Deal was not conceived as an effort to deal with climate change, but instead a “how-do-you-change-the-entire economy thing” -- a remark likely to fuel Republican claims that the deal is nothing more than a thinly veiled socialist takeover of the U. S. economy.

“The interesting thing about the Green New Deal is it wasn’t originally a climate thing at all,” Saikat Chakrabarti said in May, according to The Washington Post.

He reportedly made the remarks to Sam Ricketts, climate director for 2020 hopeful and Washington Gov. Jay Inslee, who the Post says greeted the statement with “an attentive poker face.”

“Do you guys think of it as a climate thing?” Chakrabarti then asked. “Because we really think of it as a how-do-you-change-the-entire-economy thing.”

The Green New Deal, once an idea on the fringe left of the Democratic Party, has picked up significant mainstream support this year, with a number of top 2020 contenders signing their names to a non-binding resolution pushed by Ocasio-Cortez and Sen. Ed Markey, D-Mass.

Ocasio-Cortez has called the deal “a wartime-level, just economic mobilization plan to get to 100% renewable energy.” The plan, which would cost trillions, sees the U. S. taking a “leading role in reducing emissions through economic transformation.”

It goes on to say that “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 of 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 goals include net-zero greenhouse gas emissions, job creation, massive infrastructure investment, a guarantee of clean... (Read more)

Latest News