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Democrats have tried to make the case that Green New Deal is about climate change, but a top Democratic aid has revealed that the plan will do little to solve what many on the left are calling a climate crisis. According to Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, “We’re, like, the world is going to end in 12 years if we don’t address climate change.” It appears, however, that that the Green New Deal was never intended to solve this apparent crisis.

Over the weekend, Ocasio-Cortez’s chief of staff Saikat Chakrabarti was quoted in the Washington Post saying that the Green New Deal, “wasn’t originally a climate thing at all … we really think of it as a how-do-you-change-the-entire-economy thing.”

This quote serves as direct evidence that the Green New Deal is just part of the left’s larger plan to move the American economy in a socialist direction. According to David Roberts of Vox, “The [Green New Deal] is, at its heart, a form of social-democratic populism…. Again, the GND is not just climate policy. It’s about transforming the economy … and creating a more muscular, active public sector.” Even one of the plans original cosponsors, Sen. Ed Markey of Massachusetts, sees the Green New Deal as a socialist program. “They call the Green New Deal pie in the sky. They call it socialism! … So here’s what I say for wind and solar and all-electric vehicles and clean energy: give us some of that socialism …”, said Markey in a recent interview.

The Green New Deal’s programs will have detrimental impacts on the growing US economy. A review of the original Green New Deal proposal by Americans for Tax Reform shows that the plan calls for ending the use of fossil fuels by 2030, decommissioning every nuclear power plant in the next ten years, ending air travel, mandating all new jobs be unionized, rebuilding “every building in the US for state-of-the-art energy efficiency” and blanket “economic security for all who are unable or unwilling to work.”

These programs come at an extremely high cost to the American taxpayer. According to Bloomberg News, “The so-called Green New Deal may tally between $51 trillion and $93 trillion over 10-years, concludes American Action Forum, which is run by Douglas Holtz-Eakin, who directed the non-partisan CBO from 2003 to 2005.”