A new study by the Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI) priced Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s “Green New Deal” as extremely costly.
In the 5 swing states used in the study, each household would incur at least $70k in expense year one, and a quarter million over 5 years.
Many 2020 Democrat candidates, including Kamala Harris have embraced AOC’s “Green New Deal” and appear to be hopeful to receive her endorsement.
From FoxNews
Radically transforming energy consumption under the “Green New Deal” (GND) would cost the average household at least $70,000 in the first year of its rollout, and a cool quarter-million dollars total after five years, a new study concluded.
The study, released by the Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI) on Tuesday, looked at a wide swath of data to estimate how transforming the energy sector — which includes de-carbonizing transportation and retrofitting U.S. commercial and residential buildings — would affect the average household in five representative states.
Within the first year of implementing the program, the average household in each of the given states (Alaska, Florida, New Hampshire, New Mexico, Pennsylvania) would incur at least $70,000 in expenses — followed by roughly $45,000 in annual expenses for each of the following 2-5 years and over $37,000 after that time frame.
Their estimates came on the same day as the Democrats’ second primary debate, which included leading progressive candidates who not only have endorsed the GND, but who also sought public support from its visionary, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y. A slew of other candidates — including the party’s frontrunner, former Vice President Joe Biden — have endorsed the basics of the project. Three congressional Democrats introduced a carbon tax bill last week that similarly would seek a drastic reduction in emissions.
While it’s early in the primary season, candidates will be competing soon for voters in some of the states modeled by the institute. For example, the study found that the battleground state of Pennsylvania would face over $2 quadrillion in costs for upgrading residential, commercial and industrial buildings. Florida would encounter a $1.4 quadrillion price tag and New Hampshire, one of the first primary states, would face $102.8 trillion in retrofitting costs.
The two others saw costs that were much higher than even the national debt — $352.8 trillion for New Mexico and $533.4 trillion for Alaska.
Ocasio-Cortez has downplayed cost concerns and mocked conservatives whom she argued were like Dr. Evil, demanding outlandish ransoms in the “Austin Powers” movies. But a host of studies — albeit, mostly from right-leaning organizations — have found that the Green New Deal’s costs would be astronomical.
Biden and some other 2020 Democrats, meanwhile, have endorsed its “framework” — yielding environmental proposals that would cost much less but still reach figures like $1.7 trillion over 10 years.
Like other studies of the Green New Deal, CEI’s cautioned that its findings likely underestimated the program’s actual costs.
New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio faced a crowd of angry protesters at a rally promoting the city’s Green New Deal inside Trump Tower.
“Most provisions of the GND are so broad and open-ended that the list of potential programs necessary to implement the program is limited by the capacity of legislators to imagine a new government program,” authors Daniel Turner and Kent Lassman wrote. “Therefore, it is impossible to calculate the whole or maximum cost of the GND. However, other parts of the GND are more precise, sufficiently so that an approximate minimum cost estimate is available.”
By Jon Heltzel
