Chris White Tech Reporter August 06, 2020 12:44 PM ET
Sen. Kamala Harris of California and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York are teaming up on a proposal requiring lawmakers who introduce climate bills to consider the impact such legislation will have on black people and poor communities.
The two Democrats introduced the Climate Equity Act Thursday that would, if passed, require Congress to score future climate bills based on how much they may negatively impact poor and minority communities, The Washington Post reported. The two Democrats initially unveiled a draft of the bill in 2019, when Harris began her unsuccessful run for president, media reports show.
The equity score would be similar to the economic scores the Congressional Budget Office applies to other legislation, WaPo reported. The Climate Equity Act would also apply to regulations the Trump administration proposes in the future. (RELATED: Harris, Sanders, Warren Stay Mum On Fracking Ban Proposals After Attack Sends Oil Markets Soaring)
“COVID-19 has laid bare the realities of systemic racial, health, economic, and environmental injustices that persist in our country,” Harris said in a statement to the Post. “The environment we live in cannot be disentangled from the rest of our lives.”
The bill comes as reports indicate former Vice President Joe Biden, the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee, is considering Harris to be his running mate.
Biden pledged early during the presidential campaign to pick a female running mate.
The bill “is a really big deal,” Kerene Tayloe, director of federal legislative affairs at WE ACT for Environmental Justice, told the Post, referring to the scoring system.
“Nothing like that has ever existed,” Tayloe added. The New York-based environmental group helped Ocasio-Cortez and Harris craft the legislation.
Harris backed the Green New Deal in 2019, which sought to aggressively cut carbon emissions over the next decade. The resolution, crafted by Ocasio-Cortez, called for “10-year national mobilizations” toward addressing climate change.
A fact sheet published alongside the proposal said the plan would “mobilize every aspect of American society on a scale not seen since World War 2.”
Ocasio-Cortez’s GND would reportedly phase out fossil fuel usage within 12 years. Studies show the plan would come with a hefty price.
Americans could be forced to pay up to $93 trillion to implement the Green New Deal over a decade, the conservative-leaning American Action Forum (AAF) noted in a study in February 2019.
Republicans in the Senate torpedoed the legislation in March 2019, while Democratic lawmakers called the vote a dog-and-pony show. The GOP defeated the proposal 57-0, with Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell calling the bill a socialistic ploy designed to kill the economy.
“There’s no question I’m in favor of banning fracking,” Harris said during a September 2019 CNN town hall, although she did not embrace a fracking ban in her climate plan.
Biden has similarly declined to endorse an outright ban on fracking, though he did promise during a CNN debate in March that he would stop new fracking projects.
“COVID-19 has laid bare the realities of systemic racial, health, economic, and environmental injustices that persist in our country,” Harris said in a statement to the Post…..”
Despite decades of effort going all the back to 1965 and the launch of the Democrat’s “Great Society,” government’s inability to eliminate all the inequalities in this country that Sen. Harris has listed in her comment above must be hugely frustrating for the Left. It is no wonder that Marxism is gaining in popularity. They just haven’t implemented Marx’s ideas enough.
Wikipedia writeup of the Great Society (1965):
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Society
If nothing else, you have to admire the Democrats’ persistence here. Fifty-five years and they are still hammering away at the inequality issue as though it were something new and different that we haven’t seen before. Yes indeed, the solution is for Karl Marx’s “Communist Manifesto” to be required reading for politicians, as well as in high schools and at colleges and universities across the country. It needs to be an inspiration and a standard source of guidelines for everything politicians do, a sort of ideological Holy Bible for all of us. Yea, that’s the answer. /sarc
Seriously though, this belief that government is capable of eliminating inequality has been around so long it has become a religion that never dies. How and when inequality will eventually end, I do not know. But it reminds of the idea that you should teach people how to fish instead of just feeding them fish. Beyond that, each of us remains the product of what we invest in ourselves and our lives. Nothing more, nothing less.
They declared a war on poverty. And poverty is winning.
Inequality will never end for the simple reason that people aren’t identical cogs in a machine.
Some are smarter, some are stronger, some have more drive/perseverance.
The only way to come close is to demand equal outcomes as the Democrats do, and take away from those who succeed in order to buy the votes of those who don’t.
Your scaring me.
CD,
I think we need to face that Communism is a religion trying disguise itself as an economic system! There was never much more for the Marxist’s to go on than the old: “From each according to his ability…”
Reagan summed it up best when he said; “It only works in Heaven, where they don’t need it; and Hell, where they already have it!”
There is no provision for dealing with inevitable rise on sociopaths to positions of power; look at how much trouble we’re running into with them and our system was specifically designed to prevent them from gaining total control! Unfortunately, our Founders never foresaw the press becoming the lapdogs of the Establishment and the intelligence community! A republic like ours only works if the press act as watchdogs and everyone is held accountable; at present the DemoKKKrats are literally getting away with murder and the enemedia won’t even acknowledge there are any problems with their reactions to Trump and the Chi-Com Virus! The jury is still out on whether we will survive as a constitutional republic or collapse down into a banana republic, or worse!
” inability to eliminate all the inequalities in this country” They never had any intention to eliminate any inequalities, that is precisely what keeps them in positions of power, wielding inequalities as a weapon against America is their modus operandi. A weapon they merrily use against all sides.
This comes across like it’s some bizarre form of “reparations.”
I’m all in favour. Green Bills harm the poor and the disadvantaged far more than wealthy people. Does she think poor blacks in inner cities are queuing up to buy $80,000 EVs? That BLM is demanding electricity gets made more expensive for struggling single mothers? Green policies are expensive luxuries that make everyone poorer and so impact the already poor far more.
Yes well over here in Australia there is a massive COVID19 out break because the Victorian government screwed up hotel quarantine. They employed guard’s via WhatsApp etc who in turn had sex with the quarantined and it spread from there
The Vic gov confirmed today they were employed based on their diversity policy ergo refugees from Africa that can’t speak English.
COVID-Citizens Of Victoria Ignoring Direction
From the article: “Sen. Kamala Harris of California and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York are teaming up on a proposal requiring lawmakers who introduce climate bills to consider the impact such legislation will have on black people and poor communities.”
This ought to negate any carbon dioxide taxes they are proposing since tax increases always hit the poorest people the worst, and that is especially true of gasoline taxes, which is what a carbon dioxide tax really is.
And promising to pay poor people back for the extra cost their gasoline costs them, does not fix the problem for the poor, because raising gasoline/carbon dioxide taxes causes the price of everything in the economy to go higher and the government doesn’t reimbruse anyone for those costs. They come right out of a poor person’s pocket.
Toby Young summed them up;
“Socialism always begins with a utopian vision for the brotherhood of man and ends with people eating their pets”
They have probably realized that any laws advocating Green energy is going to make evectticty and transportation more EXPENSIVE, thus very regressive. Thus, they would fix this by including more hand-outs to those in the Poverty Class.