Vice President Kamala Harris, who this week pledged to suspend the Senate filibuster to pass abortion legislation, won’t say if she will do the same to pass the multitrillion-dollar progressive Green New Deal, a promise she made during her failed 2020 presidential campaign. [emphasis, links added]
“As president of the United States, I am prepared to get rid of the filibuster to pass a Green New Deal,” Harris said in 2019, responding to how she would “build trust” with Republicans “dependent on a fossil fuel economy.”
Harris’s campaign failed to respond to an Axios inquiry this week asking if the Democratic nominee still supports her previous position.
New: In 2019, Harris pledged to eliminate the filibuster to pass a multi-trillion dollar Green New Deal.
Now, Harris’ campaign is declining to say if she still supports that filibuster carve out
she reiterated Monday she supports it for abortion rightshttps://t.co/R7VquXliGC pic.twitter.com/wPVw8xxm2T
— Alex Thompson (@AlexThomp) September 26, 2024
On Tuesday, Harris said she still supports “eliminat[ing] the filibuster for Roe,” a position that lost her the endorsement of Sen. Joe Manchin (I., W.Va.). Manchin, who left the Democratic Party in May but still caucuses with Democrats, had signaled earlier this month that he would endorse Harris but he said gutting the filibuster will “destroy our country.”
Without a filibuster, Senate Democrats would only need a simple majority of 51 votes to pass the Green New Deal rather than a 60-vote supermajority.
Harris, who cosponsored the Green New Deal as a senator, gave a vague answer on where she stands on the proposal when asked last month.
“The most important and most significant aspect of my policy perspective and decisions is that my values have not changed,” Harris said in an August CNN interview.
“You mentioned the Green New Deal. I have always believed, and I have worked on it, that the climate crisis is real, that it is an urgent matter to which we should apply metrics that include holding ourselves to deadlines around time.”
A top Harris surrogate said the vice president will embrace the progressive environmental policy if elected in November.
Rep. Ro Khanna (D., Calif.) declared that the Green New Deal “will be the vision under President Harris” in his remarks at the Democratic National Convention.
Since Harris became the Democratic nominee in July, her campaign has walked back several key policies from her 2020 presidential campaign with little explanation, such as giving two million illegal immigrants a pathway to citizenship, passing Medicare for All, and banning fracking.
Read more at Free Beacon
Doing away with the filibuster would do nothing to pass the Green New Deal if they can not get 50 senators to vote for it. This is not likely. We have already spent a trillion dollars on the “Inflation Reduction Act.” To spend even more on Green New Deal loaded with its socialist polices is not likely to get 50 votes even if the Democrats retain control the Senate.
The Green New Deal should be called The Big Green Scam because that’s what it is