"We'll give everybody a chance to go on record and see how they feel about the Green New Deal," Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said. Congress McConnell: Senate will vote on the Green New Deal

Republican lawmakers challenged Democrats to back up their support for the "Green New Deal" on Tuesday, with Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell saying he plans to bring the ambitious resolution to the Senate floor and conservatives in the House pressing for a vote in their chamber.

The move by McConnell is an attempt to use the plan spearheaded by freshman Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) to paint Democrats — including a half dozen presidential challengers —as far to the left of the American public in their support for a measure Republicans have derided as a "socialist fantasy."


"I've noted with great interest the Green New Deal and we're going to be voting on that in the Senate," McConnell said. "We'll give everybody a chance to go on record and see how they feel about the Green New Deal."

Unveiled last week by Ocasio-Cortez and Sen. Ed Markey (D-Mass.), the non-binding Green New Deal resolution, S. Res. 59 (116), calls for a 10-year “national mobilization” to move the U.S. economy off fossil fuels to combat climate change, provide health care for all, increase wages and expand union rights. Several presidential hopefuls in the Senate have signed on as co-sponsors to the non-binding resolution, including Sens. Kamala Harris. Elizabeth Warren, Amy Klobuchar, Kirsten Gillibrand and Cory Booker.

McConnell — who said last month he "wouldn’t let the Senate become a theater for show votes and messaging stunts from either side" for measures that would not get White House support — did not provide a specific time frame for a vote.

Democrats quickly dismissed McConnell's plan as a political stunt rather than a sincere effort to discuss climate change, and they vowed to consider tactics to blunt the impact of the vote.

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“I’m open to anything that makes it less rather than more likely that McConnell uses time on the Senate floor to just try to screw with Democrats,” Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.), a Green New Deal co-sponsor, told reporters.

In the House, Rep. Ted Budd (R-N.C.) said he was gathering signatures for a letter to Speaker Nancy Pelosi demanding a vote on a Green New Deal. Pelosi is not currently planning to bring the resolution to a vote.

“This specific piece of legislation has gotten a lot of attention recently and our constituents deserve to know where their representatives stand on it,” a draft of Budd's letter obtained by POLITICO says. “A recorded vote is the surest way to find out.”

President Donald Trump and many Republicans have latched on to the plan in an effort to paint Democrats as radicals who are intent on damaging the U.S. economy.

"They want to take away your car, reduce the value of your home and put millions of Americans out of work, spend a $100 trillion," Trump told a rally in El Paso, Texas, on Monday.

Critics have especially seized on a "talking points" memo erroneously published by Ocasio-Cortez's office that included offering economic security to people unwilling to work and replacing air travel with high-speed rail, though her office pulled the document and said it was an old, unfinished draft.

Ocasio-Cortez responded with a series of tweets accusing Republicans of misrepresenting the resolution while ignoring the mounting dangers of climate change.

"I also like visiting my family in Puerto Rico too much to 'ban airplanes,'" she wrote. "Maybe if the GOP did their job for once & read a piece of legislation, they’d see that communities + jobs come FIRST, not last, in the #GreenNewDeal."

Supporters of the Green New Deal have said the resolution was designed to lay out goals to fight climate change and address economic inequality rather than as specific policy proposals.

”The first questions Republicans should answer on climate change is: What is their answer on climate change? What are they going to put forward?” Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer told reporters.

Voters have increasingly shifted to support action to deal with climate change, and new polls show a growing acceptance of the link between greenhouse gas emissions and climate change — even among Republicans. Monmouth University polling from November, for example, found 64 percent of Republicans believe the science, up 15 percentage points from just three years prior. The poll also found 51 percent of GOP voters supported the government doing more to address the causes of climate change.

But Republicans say the Green New Deal hides its real costs.

“It’s possible the Democrats didn’t provide any details for their plan is because they knew outlining the actual cost would sink their plan from the very beginning,” Senate Majority Whip John Thune (R-S.D.) said Tuesday on the Senate floor. “Like other socialist fantasies this is not a plan that can be paid for by merely taking money from the rich. Actually implementing this so-called Green New Deal would involve taking money from working families.”

Sen. John Barrasso (R-Wyo.), chairman of the Environment and Public Works Committee, bashed the proposal as a "raw deal."

“I’m looking forward to voting against the Green New Deal, because it’s so bad for the economy and we’ll have an opportunity for Democrats to decide if they want to rubberstamp this lurch to the left that their party seems to be taking right now,” he said.

