How much would a Green New Deal cost? That’s the $93 trillion question some media outlets won’t ask.
New estimates suggest the price tag of the climate and economic ideas contained in the Green New Deal promoted by Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez could cost $93 trillion, Bloomberg.com reported. That’s a very green deal, indeed. However, the evening newscasts ignored the new information about the Green New Deal the day the American Action Forum released its cost estimate as well as the day after (Feb. 25 and 26).
Bloomberg reported the AAF estimate on Feb. 25, but ABC World News Tonight, CBS Evening News and NBC Nightly News all ignored the bad news for Green New Deal proponents.
Two of the three, World News and Evening News, said nothing about the Green New Deal or Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y. that night. Nightly News aired a story about a public argument related to the Green New Deal ideas. However, NBC still failed to bring up the costs of such a plan at all in its Feb. 26, report. That dispute was between first daughter Ivanka Trump and Ocasio-Cortez about a jobs guarantee.
The AAF is run by former Congressional Budget Office director Douglas Holtz-Eakin. Eakin and his AAF team announced on Feb. 25, that they analyzed some concrete projects promoted in the Green New Deal’s “sweeping policy plan.” Their astronomical estimates of $51 trillion to $93 trillion over a decade included included the proposals for a low-carbon electricity grid, net zero emissions transportation, guaranteed jobs, universal health care, guaranteed green housing and food security.
The evening news shows also avoided the Green New Deal entirely the day Ocasio-Cortez and Sen. Edward Markey, D-Mass., first announced the proposal (Feb. 7).
As if the price tag wasn’t bad enough, AAF warned “Its social impact, however, would likely exceed its enormous price tag because of its expansive re-engineering of social norms, policy processes and key institutions.”
