Ocasio-Cortez, Markey reintroduce Green New Deal resolution: ‘We need bold big climate action’

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) and Sen. Ed Markey (D-Mass.) announced the reintroduction of their signature Green New Deal resolution Thursday, along with a “Green New Deal for Health” co-sponsored by Markey and Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.).

Speaking on Capitol Hill on Thursday, Ocasio-Cortez said the successful passage of the Inflation Reduction Act in 2022 proved ambitious action on climate was possible. The bill would almost certainly never reach the House floor under the current Republican majority, but speakers repeatedly invoked the possibility of a restored Democratic trifecta in the 2024 elections.

“First, we were called unrealistic. Then, when it was when it came time for the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law and Inflation Reduction Act, we started to fight,” Ocasio-Cortez said. “We said we are not going to take crumbs, and we’re not going to settle for that — we need bold big climate action, and we need it now.”

“And that fight resulted in the largest piece of climate legislation in American history,” she added.

Markey and Khanna timed the reintroduction for the fourth anniversary of their original Green New Deal resolution in 2019, shortly after Ocasio-Cortez was sworn into Congress. The resolution proposed a broad swath of environmental and economic reforms, including expansion of high-speed rail, implementation of a “social cost of carbon” rule and creation of a state jobs program modeled after the Depression-era initiatives that are its namesake.

Khanna and Markey’s health care legislation, meanwhile, would revive the Hill-Burton program, a New Deal-era initiative that provided hospital construction grants, to provide $100 billion to hospitals for climate resilience. It would also require the Department of Health and Human Services to create a task force that would make policy on emission and climate risk disclosures for FDA-approved drugs and devices.

Ocasio-Cortez, Khanna and Markey were joined by Reps. Greg Casar (D-Texas) and Maxwell Frost (D-Fla.), neither of whom were in Congress in 2019 but have signed onto the reintroduced resolution.

Frost, the youngest current member of Congress, outlined recent extreme weather events that have devastated parts of Florida to make the case for ambitious legislation.

“Usually in this building, when we talk about cost, we talk about dollars and cents,” Frost said. “But the real cost is human life, people, communities, and so we’re here today to be their voice and work with them to build a livable future and to build a world that’s more than a livable future, it’s about a thriving, livable planet.”