Washington DC — Posting on Twitter in response to a February Fox News report, Colorado Congressman Doug Lamborn on Tuesday wrote, “The $93 trillion Green New Deal pushed by House Democrats would devastate our economy and eliminate millions of family-supporting jobs.”
In a statement to Complete Colorado Lamborn said, “The Green New Deal, which should be called a nightmare, will cost families in Colorado over $65,000 per year and offers only negligible benefits. This proposal calls for the elimination of planes, gasoline-powered cars, and affordable electricity,”
“It is nothing more than a socialist scheme,” Lamborn continued. “All this said, the Democrat’s Green New Deal will do nothing but hurt middle-class families and seniors on fixed incomes.”
In its report, Fox News cited a February 25 study outlining the projected costs per household of the Green New Deal by the American Action Forum (AAF), a Washington D.C. nonprofit describing itself as a center-right policy institute “focusing on educating the public about complex policy choices the country faces.”
AAF President Douglas Holtz-Eakin, the former director of the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office co-authored the report.
The report says “the breadth of its proposals makes it daunting to assess the GND (Green New Deal) using the standard tools of policy analysis.”
The report came up with costs of six proposals based on the broad goals of the Green New Deal:
- A 10-year transition to an exclusively low-carbon energy electricity grid;
- Enough high-speed rail transit available that air travel becomes unnecessary;
- Guaranteeing union jobs with family-sustaining wage, adequate family and medical leave, paid vacations, and retirement security to all people of the United States;
- Universal health care;
- Guaranteed housing for every American; and
- Food security for every person in the United States.
Pointing out inconsistencies in the Green New Deal, the report says “Simultaneously, the GND is curiously redundant. For example, a costly retrofitting of every structure in the United States seems considerably less environmentally beneficial once the electricity grid is completely transformed to use 100 percent clean energy than it would be if undertaken with today’s energy mix.”
To achieve the goal of net zero greenhouse gas emissions in ten years the report “conservatively” estimates it will “require a capital investment of $5.4 trillion by 2029.”
The idea of replacing all air travel with trains would require some 19, 435 miles of new track that, like California’s failed high-speed rail project, might take decades to construct. Add to that $71.2 million per train that California intended to spend, and the total estimated cost of replacing aircraft is $166.9 billion.
The report points out that the total 2017 revenue of the airline industry was $173.3 billion with expenses of $153.9 billion and $26.3 billion in fuel expenses for the diesel-electric fleet of engines. “The fuel savings that would presumably be the most important cost difference would only be a fraction of the total investment required,” says the report.
To provide guaranteed jobs for everyone the cost would range from $598 billion in 2019 to $7.4 trillion each year from 2020 to 2029.
Universal health care coverage would cost $36 trillion yearly between 2020 and 2029.
The report estimates it will cost $8.2 billion to get “a guaranteed roof over every head.”
The least expensive aspect is food security, which the AAF estimates would only require about $1.5 billion in taxpayer dollars.
The study concludes saying, “The Green New Deal is clearly very expensive. Its 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.”
