Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez's Green New Deal could cost $93 trillion, group says
Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s sweeping “Green New Deal” could end up costing close to $93 trillion, or about $600,000 per household, according to a new study released by a center-right advocacy group.
In analysis published on Monday, the American Action Forum -- which is headed by a former director of the Congressional Budget Office, Douglas Holtz-Eakin -- estimated that the New York Democrat’s policy proposal could end up costing somewhere between $51 trillion and $93 trillion over the course of the next decade.
“The Green New Deal is clearly very expensive,” the authors of the study wrote. “Its further expansion of the federal government’s role in some of the most basic decisions of daily life, however, would likely have a more lasting and damaging impact than its enormous price tag.”
Ocasio-Cortez and Sen. Ed Markey, D-Mass., unveiled a blueprint of their Green New Deal resolution at the beginning of the month; since then, it’s garnered the support of several notable Democratic senators, including presidential hopefuls Sens. Kamala Harris, D-Calif., Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., Kirsten Gillibrand, D-N.Y., and Cory Booker, D-N.J.
In the deal, Ocasio-Cortez and Markey laid out expansive proposals to not only aggressively reduce greenhouse gas emissions over the next three decades, but to guarantee millions of “good, high-wage jobs” while ensuring economic security for all Americans.
The resolution also calls for huge investments in climate-friendly infrastructure, in addition to protections for indigenous people, communities of color, the poor and others considered to be a part of a “vulnerable community.”According to the American Action Forum, however, eliminating carbon emissions from the transportation system could cost somewhere between $1.3 trillion and $2.7 trillion, while guaranteeing a job to every American would cost between $6.8 trillion and $44.6 trillion. Universal health care, meanwhile, is estimated close to $36 trillion.
Supporters of the proposal, however, argued that the cost of not implementing federal policies to fight climate change would far exceed that of the Green New Deal.
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“Any so-called "analysis" of the #GreenNewDeal that includes artificially inflated numbers that rely on lazy assumptions, incl. about policies that aren’t even in the resolution is bogus,” Markey wrote on Twitter. “Putting a price on a resolution of principles, not policies, is just Big Oil misinformation.”