Politics

Sens. Bernie Sanders, Liz Warren’s Former Advisers Helped Author A $2 Trillion Green Energy Stimulus Deal

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Sens. Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren’s former advisers are involved in a plan to cajole Democrats into supporting a Green New Deal stimulus plan that will effectively overturn the U.S. economy, which is spiraling from coronavirus quarantines.

Dozens of activists and environmental policy advisers offered a plan Sunday that would turn the COVID-19 pandemic stimulus into a massive Green New Deal project. The project would require Congress take up a multi-billion stimulus package every year until the U.S. is free of oil.

The stimulus would be renewed “annually at 4% of GDP per year until the economy is fully decarbonized and the unemployment rate is below 3.5%,” a slew of environmentalists wrote in an open letter to Congress.

Daniel Cohen, a University of Pennsylvania professor who helped advise Sanders’s presidential campaign on environmental issues, is one of the chief authors alongside Ayana Elizabeth Johnson, a marine biologist who advised Warren’s campaign.

They want Congress to put up $850 billion per year until the economy is fossil-fuel free.

“They know a stimulus is coming, and they know it’s not a question of whether there will be a stimulus, but what kind of stimulus, how big, which parts of the economy, which priorities,” Cohen told E&E News Monday before suggesting that he is not pursuing “some partisan agenda.”

Cohen added: “We need to create jobs, and we know that a dollar in green spending is worth more jobs than a dollar in fossil fuels.”

The group’s letter comes after President Donald Trump railed against Democratic lawmakers for supposedly using green energy goodies to politicize a stimulus deal.

Speaker Nancy Pelosi introduced the House’s version of a stimulus bill, which included provisions for green energy tax credits and fuel emissions regulations for airlines. Her version would cost an estimated $2.5 trillion, almost two times the amount of Senate’s bill.

Both Pelosi’s version as well as a Republican version contain payments to American workers who were financially harmed by the government’s response to coronavirus. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer supported the GOP’s bill Sunday but objected over a lack of protections against companies using bailout capital for stock buybacks.

Phase-three of the Senate stimulus plan would give $1,200 checks to every American, with married couples receiving $2,400. That check will go to Americans making less than $75,000 per year. Income earners who make above $99,000 would not receive any money.

Warren and Sanders, both of whom are Democrats, barnstormed the country during their respective 2020 presidential campaigns hoping to rally opposition to hydraulic fracking and fossil fuel production.

Warren, for her part, introduced a plan in June 2019 to ban new coal, gas and oil leases on public lands.