Elections have consequences.
As a former member of Congress and chairman of the Tea Party Caucus, no one knows that better than I do. And although every election is important, the Democratic Party’s takeover of the U.S. House of Representatives in 2018 is especially alarming. Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) and socialist radicals like Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez are aiming to achieve what Barack Obama started: the fundamental transformation of the United States of America. Nowhere is this more evident than in Ocasio-Cortez’s “Green New Deal” plan—the most radical socialist proposal in modern congressional history.
The Green New Deal is appropriately named after the original “New Deal,” the big-government power grab imposed by President Franklin Roosevelt in the 1930s. Under FDR, Democrats tripled taxes in seven years, and the government imposed an endless array of regulations, mandates, and even a secret police force to enforce them. The economy limped along for the entirety of the 1930s, with an average unemployment rate of a whopping 17 percent and Americans more dependent on government than ever.
The Green New Deal would take government overreach to a whole new level. The program would eliminate all fossil fuels from the electric grid by 2030 and force families to use much more expensive and unreliable renewable energy sources. In addition to eliminating hundreds of thousands of good jobs in the coal, natural gas, and oil industries, the Green New Deal would harm all Americans as higher energy prices raise the cost of all goods and services. Even the left-wing Brookings Institution noted in a 2014 study that wind power costs twice as much and solar three times as much as power from coal, natural gas, and oil.
This would punish lower- and middle-income families more than any other group. Pelosi, Senators Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren, Ocasio-Cortez, billionaire environmental extremist Tom Steyer, and their friends in the left-wing news media can afford to pay more for electricity. But the millions of families living paycheck to paycheck can’t. The poor often suffer the most when liberals create massive government programs.
The plan would also require a government-approved “upgrade” of all homes and businesses in the country—every home and business—to make them more “energy efficient” and add “comfort” at a cost of countless trillions of dollars. FDR could only dream of such power.
Climate Change Delusions
Supporters of the Green New Deal argue this wholesale economic destruction is necessary, because the world is about to descend into chaos created by catastrophic, man-made climate change. This fear-mongering has long been proven untrue by Heartland climate experts. As an international team of climate science and economic experts recently detailed in the newest edition of the Nongovernmental International Panel on Climate Change’s Climate Change Reconsidered series, higher global temperatures have historically been associated with greater economic growth and improvements in human health. When there is more carbon dioxide (CO2) in the atmosphere, plants generally grow faster, which means there’s more food available to feed the world’s growing population of people and animals.
This is incredibly important because regardless of what we do in the United States, the rest of the world is going to continue increasing its fossil fuel use, more than offsetting any CO2 reductions we might make. Even if we were to commit economic suicide and pass the radical Green New Deal, total global CO2 emissions would still increase by billions of tons by 2030.
Not-So-Secret Socialism
Why, then, do Ocasio-Cortez and her allies propose this radical plan? Because their real desire is to accomplish the Left’s longtime goal of moving the United States toward full adoption of socialism.
This isn’t just a theory. Significant provisions of the Green New Deal reveal its true purpose of imposing socialism on an unprecedented scale. The plan would create a “basic income program” and federal jobs guarantee providing a “living wage” to everybody who says they want one. It would impose a federal-government-run, single-payer health care system with bureaucrats and liberal politicians in Washington, DC in charge of every American’s health care. It would encourage the Federal Reserve to unleash inflation and create a system of government-owned banks to ‘create’ tens of trillions of dollars needed to fund these immense programs.
None of these proposals has anything at all to do with climate change. Ocasio-Cortez’s goal is to destroy your freedoms, not save polar bears (who are doing just fine, by the way).
Stopping Socialism
If we’re going to stop the catastrophic Green New Deal and the rise of socialism in America, supporters of individual liberty and free markets will have to work harder than ever. If America as we know it is going to survive the twenty-first century, we must act now.
While other organizations and media pundits merely complain about radical environmentalism, The Heartland Institute has led the charge in Washington, DC and state capitals across the country. Heartland is the go-to source for policymakers who want to know the truth about the climate—and these efforts are paying off.
When Steyer tried during the 2018 elections to impose upon Arizonans the same energy policies destroying California, Heartland experts were on the ground providing the public and lawmakers with the truth about the cost and unreliability of renewable energy. When environmental socialists attempted to pass carbon-dioxide taxes in multiple states, Heartland’s unmatched state-level team helped to kill these tax increases. And when the United Nations met in Poland in December to impose climate socialism worldwide, Heartland was there to organize opposition, join forces with the historic Solidarity labor union, and promote real climate science.
Other organizations might write an op-ed or two about socialism and the Green New Deal, but only The Heartland Institute is rising to this important challenge, just as we did in refuting climate alarmism. We’re launching an entire project dedicated to informing Americans—especially young people who have been indoctrinated by left-wing teachers, college professors, and the media—about the dangers of socialism. We’ve already produced dozens of socialism-themed articles and videos on StoppingSocialism.com, and our work has been featured on the Tucker Carlson Tonight show, One America News Network, Washington Examiner, Fox News, and numerous other media outlets.
And this is just the beginning. With your help, we’re going to expand our project into the largest anti-socialism campaign in the country.
The Green New Deal is a radical, dangerous, evil proposal, but support for it is growing rapidly. At least 40 members of the U.S. House of Representatives already back the plan, and four likely Democratic presidential candidates—Sens. Warren, Sanders, Cory Booker, and Kamala Harris—also publicly support most or all of it. Countless establishment news outlets have lauded the plan and turned Ocasio-Cortez into the Left’s newest media darling.
The Heartland Institute isn’t standing on the sidelines complaining about it. We’re going to defeat the Green New Deal and stop socialism with an ambitious, pro-liberty plan of our own. But we can’t do it without you. If we’re going to win America’s next great fight for freedom, we need your help. Go to https://heartland.org/donate/index.html to learn how you can join the fight against socialism.
Tim Huelskamp served as president of The Heartland Institute from 2017 to 2019.
