Author: Thomas Burr / Source: The Salt Lake Tribune
Washington • To poke fun at a liberal plan to tackle climate change, Sen. Mike Lee on Tuesday took to the Senate floor with a poster of President Ronald Reagan riding a dinosaur while firing a machine gun.
The Utah Republican, a serious conservative not generally known for prop-supported political stunts, said his point was that the Democrats’ Green New Deal was as absurd as the poster he was showing.
“I rise today,” Lee said, “to consider the Green New Deal with the seriousness it deserves.”
The GOP-led Senate took a vote on the package Tuesday afternoon in an attempt to put Democrats on the record about the Green New Deal ahead of the 2020 elections.
Democrats didn’t bite; four of them joined Republicans to oppose the measure while 43 Democrats voted present. It didn’t reach the 60-vote threshold to reach a final vote. Lee and Romney voted against the bill.
“I’m not immediately afraid of what the Green New Deal would do to our economy and our government,” Lee said. “Rather, after reading the Green New Deal, I’m mostly afraid of not being able to get through this speech with a straight face.”
“The aspirations of the proposal have been called radical. They have been called extreme,” Lee added. “But mostly they’re ridiculous. There isn’t a single serious idea here. Not one.”
The Green New Deal is essentially a wish list of actions to slash carbon emissions as well as expand the social net for those in need.
The proposals include guaranteeing a job at a living wage, with paid family…
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