Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez Proposes 70% Taxation to Pay for 'Green New Deal'

Newly-installed Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) is calling for 70% taxation on the wealthy as a way to pay for her “Green New Deal,” which proposes to use government to create new jobs by investing in renewable energy.

In an interview set to air Sunday on CBS News’ 60 Minutes, Ocasio-Cortez — who has begun referring to herself by the nickname, “AOC” — told Anderson Cooper that the “Green New Deal” would “require a lot of rapid change that we don’t even conceive as possible right now,” including raising taxes to a marginal rate of 70%, as in the 1960s.

AOC referred to the 70% rate on people at the “tippy-tops” as the rich merely paying their “fair share” of the tax burden.

She compared the “Green New Deal” to other “radical” policies like President Abraham Lincoln signing the Emancipation Proclamation, and President Franklin Delano Roosevelt launching Social Security in the New Deal.

As Breitbart News has noted, the “Green New Deal” is in fact an old idea, first championed by President Barack Obama’s “green jobs” czar, Van Jones. It seeks to implement classic socialist policies of state-run enterprises, using the pretext of an environmental crisis.

To that end, proponents often exaggerate the threat of climate change and other environmental challenges. AOC herself has warned of “cataclysmic climate disaster” unless the United States moves to 100% renewable energy sources in the next ten years.

In comparison, California — the most ambitious state in “green” energy policy — has merely set itself a goal of 100% renewables by 2045, more than 25 years away.

Obama’s “green jobs” program was a notable failure, with many investments failing to pay off — most notoriously the solar panel company Solyndra, which failed after Obama, Vice President Joe Biden, and others held it up as a model.

Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News. He is a winner of the 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. He is also the co-author of How Trump Won: The Inside Story of a Revolution, which is available from Regnery. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.