Climate change is back in the news, with Republicans winning a small battle against Democrats by forcing a vote on Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s Green New Deal. But as the Senate voted 57-0 against the procedural motion to take up the nonbinding resolution, Democrats used the outcome to fear monger their followers on Twitter.
With warnings of impending doom all thanks to lawmakers failing to commit to Cortez’s mass-depopulation scheme, Democrats all rallied their base against GOPers. But despite the holier-than-thou attitude, it’s difficult to look at the Green New Deal objectively and not see it as a plan to “check every box on the progressive wish-list,” as Austrian economist Bob Murphy put it.
It is a political plot, and one that isn’t shy about its goals either, as even supporters of the plan admit the resolution is a pretext to change society as we know it. Still, it didn’t stop Democrats from shifting the blame.
New York Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand was one of them.
On Twitter, she said Republicans treat climate change “as a game,” adding that Democrats “will not fall for this stunt.” Cortez doubled down, saying the vote is “costing us lives.” Even presidential hopeful Sen. Elizabeth Warren gave her two cents, saying that a tax on “the richest 0.1% of people in this country” could pay for the power grab.
To Republicans, however, Democrats are bonkers.
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said the plan would lead to full communities being “absolutely crushed” while President Donald Trump’s White House called it toxic to job creation.
But despite the right’s rhetoric, they all have supported plans with the same outlandish goals as Cortez’s.
The Desire to ‘Transform’ Society
As the Mises Institute’s Tho Bishop put it, the Green New Deal’s goal of fundamentally transforming society in just 10 years is based on the same failed notion used by Republicans and Democrats alike to justify sending the U.S. military to the Middle East with the hopes of turning it into a “bastion of neoliberalism.”
So while it is refreshing to see this plan being at least postponed for the time being, it is clear that nothing that comes out of Washington, D.C., is meant to boost liberty.
As Cortez and allies continue to push for a “green” takeover of the U.S. economy, it is only a matter of time until another politician comes up with a similar plan. Because in the end, the bureaucrat’s sole purpose is to expand the power of the state, not limit it to protect the individual.
As Austrian economist Ludwig von Mises explained in Planning for Freedom, to a bureaucrat “every measure that makes the government’s payroll swell is progress.” And since the state is the very institution that legalizes and organizes the systemic “predation of private property,” as Murray Rothbard wrote in Anatomy of the State, bureaucrats have no incentive to decentralize power.
As elected officials continue to work toward expanding government’s footprint, they really are working toward maintaining the idea that government is good alive. In the meantime, they also create economic incentives that keep certain classes of allies fervently supportive.
Republican or Democrat, it doesn’t matter. State officials will always work with the goal of keeping the state big and powerful at the expense of all of us.
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