Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) read the entire 14-page signature “Green New Deal” on the House floor Wednesday afternoon because she claims that Republicans do not understand it.
The self-described Democratic socialist took to the House floor on Wednesday to talk about climate change and criticize those who are against her big government-oriented solutions.
“I have noticed that there’s been an awful lot of misinformation about what is inside this resolution,” Ocasio-Cortez said from the House floor. “A tremendous amount of wild claims— everything from saying we’re seeking to ban airplanes to ending ice cream.
“As a consequence, I realized that many of my colleagues have never even read the resolution that they’re speaking on. They haven’t opened a single word of it,” Ocasio-Cortez continued.
The 30-year-old Democrat said she decided to enter the measure into the congressional record because she wanted to send a message to her Republican “colleagues across the aisle.”
Ocasio-Cortez gave a dramatic reading of the Green New Deal, otherwise known as House Resolution 109, which calls for drastically reducing the amount of greenhouse gas emissions, creating millions of jobs, and strengthening U.S. infrastructure by launching a 10-year phase to transition into clean energy.
The bill did not cite how much the program would cost, but one study said the amount of money needed to fund the Green New Deal would be about $93 trillion in the first ten years.
“Why is this so controversial?” Ocasio-Cortez said at the end of her House speech, urging fellow Democrats to join her in supporting the measure.