Democrats won Tuesday’s two Senate runoff elections in Georgia, NBC News projected Wednesday, clinching control of the U.S. Senate and significantly shaping what President-elect Joe Biden can accomplish on climate change and other issues when he takes office.
The projected victories of the Rev. Raphael Warnock and Jon Ossoff give the Democratic Party 50 seats and leave a tiebreaking vote to Vice President-elect Kamala Harris.
Current Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., will become majority leader in place of Republican Sen. Mitch McConnell, and Schumer will then decide what occurs on the Senate floor.
Without a GOP-controlled Senate, Biden has greater leeway to pass climate change legislation. The former vice president’s climate action pledge includes an ambitious $2 trillion economic plan that would accelerate a clean-energy transition, cut carbon emissions from the electricity sector by 2035 and achieve net-zero emissions by 2050.
The goals of Biden’s climate plan are in line with targets set by other major economies including China and the European Union. However, many of the policies would have been blocked by a Republican-controlled Senate.
The $2 trillion plan will still be a tough sell even as Democrats take over the White House and Senate. But experts are optimistic for some broader bipartisan-backed climate legislation to pass in upcoming years.
“Democratic control of the Senate means funding for climate action and the energy transition through appropriations, policy advances through the reconciliation process, political support and messaging from Congressional leadership, and potentially if one is being highly optimistic, big-ticket climate legislation with some level of bipartisan support,” said Michael Burger, head of the Sabin Center for Climate Change Law at Columbia University.
Some environmental experts worry that not enough Democrats will take serious climate action and expect more modest bipartisan legislation that won’t match the demands of climate advocates or actions by other countries.
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I predict that Biden will proclaim a Climate Emergency which will ignite a massive amount a spending which will either cause further debt or an increase in taxes
As long as they have all the tax payers mney to waste then the Dirty Democrats don’t give hoot about the needs of Americans as long as they can rub elbows with the Globalists