Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez along with other progressive lawmakers are looking to create a 1.5 million-strong ‘climate corps’ as part of a sweeping overhaul of the way the government addresses climate change.
‘The Civilian Climate Corps aims to employ 1.5 million young Americans – putting them to work remediating blight, maintaining our parks and natural lands – and ultimately put them on a path to a long-term career, providing support like student loan relief and child/eldercare,’ the New York congresswoman wrote on Twitter Tuesday of the new initiative.
She continued: ‘Much like the CCC of the New Deal-era, the GND’s Civilian Climate Corps closes the gap between those who need work and work that needs to be done.’
Progressives are aiming to brand their ‘CCC’ as the modern day Civilian Conservation Corps, which was created by President Franklin D. Roosevelt in his New Deal as a way toward recovery during the Great Depression.
The New Deal-era program gave unemployed young men jobs related to conserving and developing government-owned rural lands.
The climate corps program will cost the U.S. $10 billion.
An aide to co-sponsor Ed Markey told Fox News the climate corps would be passed as part of Joe Biden’s $2.3 trillion American Jobs Plan – and the president has already voiced his support for the initiative.
Progressive Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is pushing a new program to create 1.5 million jobs with the ‘Civilian Climate Corps’ as part of her larger Green New Deal climate change initiative
AOC is pushing the program is like that of FDR’s New Deal creating the Civilian Conservation Corps as part of his New Deal to create jobs recovery in the Great Depression
The Senate’s ‘Civilian Climate Corps for Jobs and Justice Act’ creating the new workforce was introduced last month by Senators Ed Markey, Bernie Sanders, Alex Padilla and Kristen Gillibrand. If passed, it would seek to employ 1.5 million Americans over the next five years, who would make up the so-called Civilian Climate Corps.
‘The Corporation for National and Community Service has the ability to recruit, select, fund, and oversee 1,500,000 members of service corps by 2025 to complete important projects across the entire country to help address the climate crisis,’ the bill reads.
Other national service programs and initiatives, such as AmeriCorps, fall under the Corporation for National and Community Service.
Jobs in this line, however, are not known for their excellent pay – so appear on the surface to be an odd way to tackle unemployment. In fact, usually Americorps workers are seen more as volunteers who receive a stipend and are encouraged, since they are compensated so little, to sign up for food stamps.
Therefore, Markey and Ocasio-Cortez are proposing climate corps members be paid at least $15 an hour, progressive’s ideal federal minimum wage.
They are also seeking to get corps members other benefits like child care, counseling and a $25,000 grant per year they can put toward student debt or future education.
They are hoping the climate corps will create a path toward a future career in the ‘clean economy workforce.’
The workers would receive on-the-job training and work with community groups, including unions, on initiatives to ‘reduce carbon emissions, enable a transition to renewable energy, build healthier and more resilient communities, implement conservation projects with proven climate benefits, and help communities recover from climate disasters.’
If adopted, the measure would be paid for just like all other federal spending – congressional appropriation of taxpayer money.
It would cost an estimated $10 billion.
The $2.3 trillion American Jobs Plan would allocate $10 billion to ‘put a new, diverse generation of Americans to work conserving our public lands and waters, bolstering community resilience, and advancing environmental justice through a new Civilian Climate Corps, all while placing good-paying union jobs within reach for more Americans.’
The proposal would be paid for by a slew of tax hikes, including raising the corporate tax rate from the current 21 per cent to 28 per cent and imposing a higher global minimum on U.S. businesses’ foreign earnings.
Although it’s unclear if the climate corps would create a tax hike on its own, the larger Green New Deal would see a significant raise in federal spending – and therefore Americans’ taxes – over the next decade.
Even members of the Democratic party have pushed back against the proposal to raise the corporate tax rate, claiming it could hurt the U.S. in terms of global competitiveness.
According to a 2019 analysis by the nonpartisan Tax Foundation, raising taxes on only the wealthy would bring in less than $3 trillion over the next 10 years, while the cost of the Green New Deal during that time would cost several times that.
AOC and other progressive lawmakers reintroduced the Green New Deal in April – the climate corps part of the proposal would be part of Biden’s American Jobs Plan and cost $10 billion
Ocasio-Cortez’s proposed 70 per cent marginal tax rate could raise around $190 billion in the next decade.
At least 50 per cent of the funding – and workforce – is reserved for ‘environmental justice’ while another 10 per cent in funding will be allocated for tribal communities.
The lawmakers proposing the climate corps are seeking in the bill ‘[t]o amend the National and Community Service Act of 1990 to establish a Civilian Climate Corps to help communities respond to climate change and transition to a clean economy, and for other purposes.’
The new workforce would be assigned to federally funded projects specifically addressing climate change as part of the Green New Deal.
When reintroducing the Green New Deal in April, Ocasio-Cortez told reporters: ‘What we’re going to do is make sure communities like Flint, Baltimore, the South Bronx, St. Louis, rural communities whose infrastructure was never properly built in the first place, are first in line to rectify the injustices of the past and make sure they get everything they need to thrive in the future.’
