Biden Focuses on ‘Deploying a Climate Army,’ Republicans Warn
Lucy Gilbert /
A new House Republican bill targets President Joe Biden’s $30 billion taxpayer-funded plan for a Climate Corps.
If Biden’s initiative succeeds, the Climate Corps will train 20,000 young people “for jobs in the clean energy economy” focused on “advancing environmental justice, deploying clean energy, implementing energy-efficient technologies, and tackling climate change,” according to the White House.
However, Republicans have slammed Biden’s initiative as an attempt to deploy a “climate army.”
Rep. Bob Good, R-Va., who introduced the No American Climate Corps Act on Friday, said it is another example of the Biden administration “furthering its radical anti-American energy agenda.”
“Americans are struggling to make ends meet because of Bidenomics. Instead of recognizing that family budgets are already stretched thin by sky-high energy prices, President Biden is focused on deploying a climate army that will increase regulatory burdens on business owners and drive inflation across the economy even higher,” said Good.
The bill “prohibits any federal funds from being used for the purposes of creating an American Climate Corps or a similar program,” according to a one-pager explaining Good’s bill.
Biden announced his Climate Corps program Sept. 20 after a group of left-wing politicians had urged him to establish the program through executive action. Sens. Ed Markey, D-Mass.; Ron Wyden, D-Ore.; Bernie Sanders, I-Vt.; and Martin Heinrich, D-N.M., joined with Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y.; Judy Chu, D-Calif.; and Joe Neguse, D-Colo., in leading 44 of their colleagues on the effort.
Members on the Right, like Good, say they believe initiatives like this inflict hyperinflation, increase consumer costs, and deplete American energy capacity.
Good’s one-pager explains the initiative as an “attempt to mimic” President Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s New Deal, which expanded government in the 1930s during the Great Depression.
“President Biden and Democrats’ continued climate change-fueled war on American energy independence will cost over $500 billion in climate spending with the passage of bills like the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, the CHIPS and Science Act, and the Inflation Acceleration Act,” Good’s one-pager warns.
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