Sanders and Ocasio-Cortez Team Up on Climate Change Resolution
Bernie Sanders is teaming up with Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez on a resolution calling for “massive” action to reverse climate change.
(Bloomberg) -- Senator Bernie Sanders is teaming up with Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez on a resolution calling for “massive” federal government action to reverse climate change.
The Vermont senator, who’s running for the 2020 Democratic presidential nomination, is seeking to shore up his progressive base as other candidates like Senators Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts and Kamala Harris of California make gains in opinion polls.
It’s not the first time that he’s partnered with Ocasio-Cortez, a freshman from New York who last week publicly feuded with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi over the speaker’s dismissive comments about her Twitter followers.
A draft obtained by Bloomberg declares that global warming caused by humans has resulted in “a climate emergency that severely and urgently impacts the economic and social well-being, health and safety, and national security of the United States.”
The lawmakers demand “a national, social, industrial, and economic mobilization of the resources and labor of the United States at a massive-scale to halt, reverse, mitigate, and prepare for the consequences of the climate emergency and to restore the climate for future generations.”
In May, Ocasio-Cortez and Sanders joined forces to advance another progressive cause, proposing legislation that would cap rates on credit card and other consumer loans and allow post offices to offer low-cost basic financial services, such as loans and checking and savings accounts.
The nonbinding sense of Congress resolution, also to be sponsored by Representative Earl Blumenauer of Oregon, is set to be introduced on Tuesday and follows earlier efforts to champion Ocasio-Cortez’s Green New Deal. Moderate House Democrats, however, are leery of the Green New Deal because it includes proposals that have little support in their districts. Prospects for passage of the Sanders-Ocasio-Cortez resolution are uncertain.
A Sanders spokesman, Keane Bhatt, said that President Donald Trump “insists on calling” climate change a hoax.
The senator, Bhatt added, “is proud to partner with his House colleagues to challenge this absurdity and have Congress declare what we all know: we are facing a climate emergency that requires a massive and immediate federal mobilization.”
To contact the reporters on this story: Laura Litvan in Washington at llitvan@bloomberg.net;Steven T. Dennis in Washington at sdennis17@bloomberg.net
To contact the editors responsible for this story: Michael Shepard at mshepard7@bloomberg.net, John Harney, Laurie Asséo
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