The “Green New Deal” co-sponsored by Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., is promoted by its supporters as a means to help save the planet from “climate change.”

But Ocasio-Cortez’s chief of staff has admitted what should be apparent to anyone who examines its prescriptions: The plan’s true objective is to radically transform America’s free-enterprise economy into a socialist system.

The acknowledgment by Chakrabarti came in an exchange reported by the Washington Post with Sam Ricketts, who directs climate policy for Washington Gov. Jay Inslee, a 2020 Democratic presidential candidate.

The Post explained that Ricketts met with Chakrabarti this spring after Ocasio-Cortez called Inslee’s climate-change plan the “gold standard” in policy.

“The interesting thing about the Green New Deal is it wasn’t originally a climate thing at all,” Chakrabarti said.

The Post said Ricketts “greeted this startling notion with an attentive poker face.”

“Do you guys think of it as a climate thing?” Chakrabarti continued. “Because we really think of it as a how-do-you-change-the-entire-economy thing.”

Socialist ‘wish list’

In an opinion column for the Washington Examiner, Philip Klein contended the Green New Deal “has always rested on deception.”

“Ocasio-Cortez and her backers have argued that we are facing catastrophic emergency and that if we don’t act immediately the looming devastation will be unavoidable,” he wrote.

“But at the same time, the plan is a wish list of ideas that American socialists would be pushing regardless of the climate issue, and they are in no way necessary to address the global emergency: free college, more union jobs, free healthcare for all, economic security, and ‘guaranteeing a job with a family-sustaining wage, adequate family and medical leave, paid vacations, and retirement security to all people of the United States.'”

Klein noted a Senate resolution on the Green New Deal was co-sponsored by six 2020 presidential candidates: Sens. Bernie Sanders, Kirsten Gillibrand, Kamala Harris, Elizabeth Warren, Cory Booker and Amy Klobuchar.

He argued that while Ocasio-Cortez and her allies are free to make the case for why the U.S. should move toward a socialist economy, they don’t have a right to use the pretext of a global emergency to do so.

“You can make a case that scientists have warned of disastrous consequences without action to curb carbon emissions, and try to shame those who are blocking action,” he said. “But it’s another thing to define ‘serious action on climate change’ as requiring people to embrace AOC’s economic vision.”

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