The Senate overwhelmingly voted to reject House Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s Green New Deal plan to combat climate change in what is being described by Democrats as a political stunt by Majority Leader Mitch McConnell.
AOC: “What McConnell’s doing is that he’s trying to rush this bill to the floor without a hearing, without any markups — because he doesn’t want to save our planet. Because he thinks we can drink oil in 30 years when all our water is poisoned.”
McConnell, R-Ky., brought the plan to a vote in an attempt to force vulnerable Democratic incumbents to take a position on the controversial plan, which hasn’t gone through the formal committee process yet. As a result, nearly all Democrats voted “present” on the bill, bringing the final vote tally of 57 against and 0 in favor.
Three red-state Democrats, Sens. Joe Manchin of West Virginia, Doug Jones of Alabama and Angus King, a Maine Independent who caucuses with the Democrats, voted against the plan.
McConnell coyly said the vote was an “opportunity to go on the record” while blasting the bill’s features that Republicans say will devastate the economy.
“My colleagues want to pull the emergency brake on the U.S. economy because it isn’t ‘green’ enough,” he said during a speech on the Senate floor. “But global carbon emissions are a global problem. We only produce about 15 percent of the global total.”
Manchin elaborated on his vote against the plan in a statement.
“While I appreciate the renewed conversation around climate change that the Green New Deal and its supporters have sparked, I think we need to focus on real solutions that recognize the role fossil fuels will continue to play.”
“I have said it before: Manmade climate change is real and it’s a serious threat to our citizens, to our economy, to our environment, to our national security and to our world,” he added. “This climate problem is a massive one and we must act, but aspirational documents will not solve this crisis — real solutions focused on innovation will.”
The plan, introduced by Ocasio-Cortez and Sen. Ed Markey of Massachusetts, who is the bill’s primary sponsor in the Senate, said the vote is just the beginning of a broader debate on climate change, which is sure to be a hot topic heading into the 2020 elections.
Ocasio-Cortez, of New York, called the scene a “bluff-vote” and a “disgrace.”
“What McConnell’s doing is that he’s trying to rush this bill to the floor without a hearing, without any markups — because he doesn’t want to save our planet. Because he thinks we can drink oil in 30 years when all our water is poisoned.”
The GOP’s whole game of wasting votes in Congress to target others “on the record”, for leg they have no intent to pass, is a disgrace.
Stop wasting the American peoples’ time + learn to govern. Our jobs aren’t for campaigning, & that’s exactly what these bluff-votes are for. https://t.co/ELzpQhlezo
— Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (@AOC) March 23, 2019
McConnell fired off a series of tweets Tuesday, calling the Green New Deal the Democrats’ latest “rallying cry: Killing off entire domestic industries.”
It’s remarkable to see a party coalesce around a proposal to forcibly remake the entire country on the whims of Brooklyn and San Francisco. But it’s been even more stunning to see my Democrat colleagues angry and upset that the plan they support is about to get a vote.
— Leader McConnell (@senatemajldr) March 26, 2019
And they’ll see which senators are so fully committed to radical left-wing ideology that they can’t even vote “no” on self-inflicted economic ruin that would take a sledgehammer to America’s middle class.
— Leader McConnell (@senatemajldr) March 26, 2019