Who is Running the Show Behind AOC?

[BIAD]

 
It's official, unicorns are out and seahorses are in!

Senate unanimously votes down Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez's Green New Deal 57-0 with high profile Democrats
joining Republicans to show their disapproval for the radical plan as she charges the GOP with wrecking the
world.

*The Senate roundly rejected Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez's Green New Deal as expected
on Tuesday with not a single senator voting 'yes'.

*The final Senate vote was 57 nays and 43 present.

*Most of the Democrats voted 'present' in protest .

*Ocasio-Cortez argued she encouraged the senators to vote 'present'.

*Democratic Sens. Joe Manchin of West Virginia; Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona; and Doug Jones of
Alabama all voted no as did Independent Sen. Angus King.

*Senate GOP Leader Mitch McConnell staged a show vote on Green New Deal.

*The move was designed to put Democrats on the record about the progressive plan, in a vote
Republicans can exploit later for political purposes.

*Earlier Tuesday, Ocasio-Cortez slammed Republican Sen. Mike Lee, who mocked her Green New
Deal in a speech on the Senate floor.

*'If this guy can be Senator, you can do anything,' she tweeted.

*Lee, in a colorful speech, used a variety of photos to make his point.

*Lee claimed the deal would ban airplanes and leave Hawaii to use 'a massive fleet of giant, highly
trained sea horses' to get around.



'The Senate roundly rejected Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez's Green New Deal as expected on Tuesday with not a single
senator voting 'yes' for the progressive star's signature policy initiative. Ocasio-Cortez defended herself after the defeat and
argued she encouraged the Democratic senators to vote 'present' instead of in the affirmative. 

'I encouraged them to vote present, along w/ others. McConnell tried to rush the #GreenNewDeal straight to the floor without
a hearing. The real question we should be asking: Why does the Senate GOP refuse to hold any major hearings on climate
change?,' the self-described socialist explained in a tweet responding to the lack of Democratic votes. 

'The GOP’s climate delaying is costing us lives + destroying communities. Iowa, Nebraska & many in the Midwest are
catastrophically flooded right now, in one of the 1st major climate change disasters of 2019. A #GreenNewDeal urges
us to pursue a plan on the scale of the problem,' she added.

Democrats slammed Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell for holding a 'sham' vote on the matter -it was a non-binding
resolution, meaning it had no force of law, and needed 60 votes to advance in the legislative process, which was an impossible
task given Democrats only have 47 votes in their corner.

Most of the Democrats voted 'present' in protest while Democratic Sens. Joe Manchin, who represents the red state of West
Virginia; Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona; and Doug Jones of Alabama voted no, as did Independent Sen. Angus King of Maine,
who caucuses with Democrats.
The final vote was 57 nays and 43 present.

Ahead of the vote, Democrats and Republicans exchanged bitter words on the Senate floor while Ocasio-Cortez slammed the
Republican senator who mocked her Green New Deal in a speech that used props and photos -including one of a Aquaman
riding seahorse -to make his point.

'If this guy can be Senator, you can do anything,' she said via Twitter, retweeting a tweet with photos and comments from Sen. Mike
Lee's floor speech making fun of her signature program. 'GOP Senators are using their Congressional allowances to print
Aquaman posters for themselves to argue that a #GreenNewDeal saving our nation from climate change is a 'waste of money,''
she also tweeted, adding an emoji of laughing face. 

 

Lee, in a colorful speech, used a variety of photos to make his point, including Aquaman on a sea horse, Ronald Reagan and a
dinosaur, a still from the 'Star Wars' franchise of Luke Skywalker riding a tauntaun, and cows. 
'After reading the Green New Deal I'm afraid of not being able to get through this speech with a straight face,' he said as he began
his remarks.

He claimed the Green New Deal wants to eliminate airplanes -a likely reference to its goal to end reliance on fossil fuels -and suggested
states like Hawaii would have to use a fleet of sea horses to travel instead.  Standing next to a large photo of Aquaman riding a sea horse,
Lee noted: 'Under the Green New Deal, this is probably Hawaii's best bet.'
He conceded that 'a massive fleet of giant, highly trained sea horses would be cool, it would be really awesome.
But we have no idea about scalability or domestic capacity.' 

Lee claimed his floor speech which propelled him into a Twitter trending topic, was meant to illustrate how silly he believes the non-binding
resolution to be. The Republican senator from Utah even claimed that 'problems of human imagination are not solved by more laws, they’re
solved by more humans, more people.’

'The solution to climate change is not this unserious resolution we’re considering this week in the Senate but rather the serious solution to
human flourishing. The solution to so many of our problems at all times and in all places is to fall in love, get married, and have some kids,'
he added.

McConnell put the vote on the calendar to force Democrats, including a slew of 2020 presidential contenders, to go on the record about the
progressive plan in a vote that he knew would fail. But Democrats' countered his maneuver with one of their own: voting 'present' -which does
not count towards or against passage but does contribute to the quorum, meaning the lawmaker does not have a missing vote on their record.  

Democratic Sen. Ed Markey of Massachusetts, the principle sponsor of the legislation in the Senate, called McConnell's move a 'sham.'
He said Tuesday before the vote that the GOP leader 'wants to sabotage calls for climate action.'
And Ocasio-Cortez slammed the majority leader for holding a 'bluff vote.'

'The GOP's whole game of wasting votes in Congress to target others 'on the record', for leg they have no intent to pass, is a disgrace.
Stop wasting the American peoples' time + learn to govern. Our jobs aren't for campaigning, & that's exactly what these bluff-votes are for,'
she wrote on Twitter on Friday. 
Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer called the vote a 'political stunt.'

'With this exercise, the Republican Majority has made a mockery of the legislative process. It is a political act, a political stunt.
Everyone here knows it's a stunt, including the Majority Leader himself. He put something on the floor and then votes no.
What's the point of that other than showing how hypocritical this act is?,' Schumer said Tuesday on the Senate floor.

'But with this exercise, they have also elevated the issue in a way I am sure they never intended. And for that, I want to thank them because
now we're finally talking about climate change,' he added. Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, a presidential contender who is a co-sponsor of the Green
New Deal legislation, also called it a 'sham' vote on Tuesday and said the 'GOP is treating this like a political stunt, they are treating climate
change like a game.'
She voted present.

All the presidential contenders in the Senate have signed on as co-sponsors of Ocasio-Cortez's signature legislation: Sens. Cory Booker,
Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren, Kamala Harris, Amy Klobuchar and Gillibrand. McConnell plotted his crafty move as a way to force Senate
Democrats to vote their view - a potential on-the-record move Republicans could exploit in the coming election.

The move would also pit the moderate wing of the party against its left flank, a battle Democrats will be fighting in the upcoming presidential
primary. McConnell slammed Democrats for moving to the left on a host of issues. 
'This whole Democrat effort to re-brand all the failed ideas of 20th century socialism with a little green paint -every member of this body will
have the opportunity to cast a clear vote,' McConnell said Monday on the Senate floor.

He continued his barrage on Tuesday. 
'The Senate is going to vote on the far-left wish list that many of our Democratic colleagues have rushed to embrace –the so-called Green New
Deal. For a relatively sparse resolution, this proposal has already traveled quite a fascinating path here in Congress. It originated with the most
radical, farthest-left members of the new House Democrat majority,' he said on the Senate floor.

And the National Republican Senatorial Committee is using Ocasio-Cortez in attacks ads similar to how the GOP has used Speaker Nancy
Pelosi in these type of ads for years. In a tweet attacking Democratic Rep. Joaquin Castro of Texas, who is considering a run against Republican
Sen. John Cornyn, the NRSC said Castro 'votes with AOC 94% of the time.'   

The Green New Deal is a statement of goals and doesn't make specific policy proposals, nor does it specify how it would pay for its ambitious plans. 
The plan aims to slow climate change by ending the reliance on fossil fuels within 10 years; to upgrade power grids and existing buildings for
maximum energy efficiency; to overhaul transportation systems; and to provide every American with a job and health care. 

The conservative American Action Forum estimated the Green New Deal will cost $93 trillion.
Other organizations have found the deal too vague to get a full cost although Forbes estimated just six of the goals would roughly cost $2.5 trillion

a year...'

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Senator Mike Lee, Ladies and Gentlemen!