WASHINGTON – Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell announced Tuesday he’ll bring Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s signature climate proposal to a vote on the Senate floor — a move designed to put Democrats on the spot.
“I’ve noted with great interest the Green New Deal,” McConnell told reporters at the Capitol. “And we’re going to be voting on that in the Senate. It will give everybody an opportunity to go on record and see how they feel.”
Republicans view the proposal to transition to clean energy as a winning wedge issue in the 2020 elections.
They’ve framed the plan as a radical agenda and step toward socialism.
President Trump made the Green New Deal a focal point of his first rally of 2019 Monday night in El Paso, mocking it as a “high school term paper that got a low mark.”
Ocasio-Cortez countered that Trump is not equipped to give criticism of her House resolution since he “can’t even read briefings written in full sentences.”
The Green New Deal House resolution introduced last week calls for the elimination of US greenhouse gas emissions by 2050 through massive investments in clean energy sources and millions of jobs.
The House resolution is not a prescriptive plan, but rather a statement of aspirations in the hope that lawmakers can rally behind a specific funding proposal after the 2020 elections.