culture, in government and the economy, in human behavior itself – can be orchestrated. Its proponents see the Green New Deal as the Swiss Army Knife of political programs – or perhaps the policy equivalent of those plastic gadgets that Ron (“Veg-O-Matic”) Popeil used to hawk on late-night TV. It does everything all at once! The explainer admits its ambition right up top: “This is a massive transformation of our society with clear goals and a timeline.” The timeline is a brisk 10 years. And if you think the timeline is impressive, wait until you see the goals the Green New Dealers plan to thrust down the country’s gaping maw. The chief transformation is to “move America to 100% clean and renewable energy” by 2030. But as you read along you see that this transformation to renewables isn’t really the ultimate end of the GND. It isn’t even really an end in itself. It is a means to many ends. To paraphrase Popeil: This is the only government program you’ll ever need! So here we go: The Green New Deal will: “create millions of jobs,” each with an income high enough to support a family; “ensure justice and equity” for all previously marginalized groups; give workers job training; guarantee a high-quality college education for everyone; provide “healthy food”; move “the unhoused” into new houses; and provide a “living wage” to those who aren’t working. (An early draft of the explainer said the GND would give a living wage even to those “unwilling to work.”) It will also provide “high- quality health care.” And it will “upgrad[e] all existing buildings in the United States and building new buildings to achieve maximal
energy efficiency, water efficiency, safety, affordability, comfort, and durability, including through electrification.” Again, you can hear the echo of Ron Popeil: Isn’t that amazing! It is, it is! It’s also expensive! Unfortunately, after listing its goals, the explainer goes on for four and a half single-spaced pages without a specific explanation of how this massive disgorgement of government money would first be accumulated. A carbon tax, perhaps? “We’re not ruling a carbon tax out, but a carbon tax would be a tiny part of a Green New Deal.” Cap and trade, then? “Cap and trade may be a tiny part of the Green New Deal...” At last a mechanism is revealed. If the GND is going to require lots of money, the government will simply print it. “The Federal Reserve can extend credit to power these projects and investment and new public banks can be created to extend credit.” The era of tax-and-spend is dead. The Green New Deal brings us into an era of print-and- spend. “The question isn’t how we will pay for it, but what will we do with our new shared prosperity.” Who wouldn’t want to party with these guys? The Green New Dealers are aware that there might be some skeptics, eager to poo-poo their dreamy ambitions. The explainer tries to rebut the killjoys in advance. One technique is to cite bogus history. “When FDR called on America to build 185,000 planes to fight World War II, every business leader, CEO, and general laughed at him.” That’s not an exaggeration or even a caricature of a historical fact – it’s just wrong. “If Eisenhower wanted to build the interstate highway system today, people would ask how we’d pay for
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April 2019
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