Former CBO Director Estimates Green New Deal Will Cost $93 Trillion; But Don't Worry, Kamala Harris Says It Doesn't Matter

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Irz05D__PXs

The cost of the Democrats’ proposed legislation to take over the US economy, otherwise known as the Green New Deal, has been estimated at a whopping $93 trillion or $600,000 per household. Former Congressional Budget Office Director and current President of the American Action Forum Douglas Holtz-Eakin leads a team of five who recently completed a study of the scope, scale and implications of the GND. Their report can be viewed here.

The three most significant statements from the report are:

(GND’s) further expansion of the federal government’s role in some of the most basic decisions of daily life, however, would likely have a more lasting and damaging impact than its enormous price tag.

The government wants to play “a role in some of the most basic decisions of our daily life.” That sounds a little bit like socialism. This one sentence tells us all we need to know.

The GND’s proposed goals, “mobilization,” and specific policy projects encompass social and institutional changes far exceeding the narrow policy goals, but these changes are impossible to quantify at this point.

The second statement tells us that the actions the Democrats are proposing far exceed what is necessary to achieve their stated policy goals. Rather than their stated goal of fighting climate change, they plan to gain control over the entire US economy and all of the people who participate in it. They know that climate change is not an existential threat. The planet will be little changed in 10 or 12 years. This is all about power.

The GND will be very expensive – our initial estimates for the tractable aspects (best thought of as estimating the order of magnitude) are summarized below:

Chart Credit: American Action Forum: https://www.americanactionforum.org/research/the-green-new-deal-scope-scale-and-implications/

Prior to Eakin’s report, estimates of $32 trillion were bandied about. And even that was an impossible amount of money for us to spend. A price tag of triple that amount is sheer madness.

Before this report was released, when we believed the cost was only $32 trillion, 2020 presidential candidate Sen. Kamala Harris, was interviewed by CNN’s John King. (The relevant segment starts at 21:10 in the video above.)

King expresses concern about what the GND will cost. Immediately, she looks at him as if he’s crazy for even suggesting money.

Harris: There’s no question, we have to be practical, but being practical also recognizes that climate change is an existential threat to us as human beings. Being practical also recognizes that greenhouse gases are threatening our air and our planet and that it is well within our capacity as human beings to change our behaviors in a way that can reduce its effects. That’s practical.

King: Can we afford it?

Harris: Of course we can afford it.

King: $2.5, $3 trillion a year for Medicare for all by some studies. Depending upon which sections of the New Deal you pick to do first, that’s money. You know what the Republican’s are going to say, tax and spend liberals, pie in the sky.

Harris: One of the things that I admire and respect is the measurement that is captured in three letters, ROI. What’s the return on investment? People in the private sector understand this really well. It’s not about a cost. It’s about an investment. And then the question should be, is it worth the cost in terms of the investment’s potential. Are we going to get back more than we put in?