Despite continued criticism from Republican legislators and President Donald Trump, Sen. Ed Markey is standing behind the "Green New Deal," legislation he announced Tuesday with Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez to combat climate change and create jobs.
Markey said he thinks much of the criticism of the deal is an attempt by conservatives to distract from the issue of climate change.
“That's their game book,” Markey said in an interview with Boston Public Radio Wednesday. “That's the way they play it. It's always about something other than the core issues that are inside the big health and environmental proposals which Democrats have. So we know it's not easy.”
Read more: Sen. Markey: 'The Planet Is Running A Fever'
Republicans have dismissed the bill, which claims it will achieve net-zero greenhouse gas emissions in 10 years and create clean energy jobs, technologies and infrastructure, as heavy-handed and “impossible.”
In a rally Monday night in Texas, Trump said the deal “sounds like a high school term paper that got a low mark.” In response, Ocasio-Cortez tweeted, “Ah yes, a man who can’t even read briefings written in full sentences is providing literary criticism of a House Resolution.”
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, who has publicly denounced the legislation, announced he plans to hold a Senate vote on the deal.
According to Markey, an “army” of support exists for the proposed deal that did not exist in 2009, when he proposed the Waxman-Markey Bill, or the American Clean Energy and Security Act of 2009, that promised to reduce greenhouse gas emissions 80 percent by 2050, and was struck down.
“This time we're ready, we have an army,” Markey said. “We haven't had a debate in the country in 10 years on climate change, and now we have a movement building across the country on this. We have struck a nerve with the American people, with the green generation.”
