Energy Environment
Energy and Environment FREE to PROSPER A Pro-Growth Agenda for the 117th Congress Energy and Environment REJECT THE GREEN NEW DEAL AND SIMILAR CENTRAL PLANNING SCHEMES The Green New Deal (GND), a nonbinding resolution introduced by Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) and Sen. Ed Markey (D-MA) in February 2019, calls for “a new national, social, industrial, and economic mobilization on a scale not seen since World War II and the New Deal era.” The GND envisions a massive expansion of federal spending and regulation to decarbonize the economy while guaranteeing health care, affordable housing, higher education, job training, family-sustaining wages, and retirement security for all. The costs required to achieve that end point are unsustainably large, vastly exceed benefits, and are not scientifically justified. Congress should: ◆ Reject the Green New Deal and similar central-planning schemes. The GND would impose unsustainable costs on the U.S. energy sector, inflate energy prices, depress gross domestic product (GDP) growth, and impoverish American households. A March 2019 study by American Enterprise Institute economist Benjamin Zycher estimates that “meeting 100 percent of the power demand in the United States through clean, renewable, and zero-emission energy sources” would cost $490.5 84 Free to Prosper: A Pro-Growth Agenda for the 117th Congress billion per year, or $3,845 per household. Factoring in the budget cost of the social spending programs required to sustain the pro-GND coalition in Congress and the deadweight loss of the associated tax hikes, Zycher estimates the total annual cost of the GND would be nearly $9 trillion.
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