Democrats are dropping the “Green New Deal” mantra despite their unbridled support for the far-left legislation just a few years ago, according to Axios.
Congressional Democrats have combined to mention the “Green New Deal” only six times in the past three months, the fewest mentions since the term became popular in fall 2018, Axios reported, citing data from the tracking software Quorum. While many Democrats at the state level continue to pursue strict climate goals as President Donald Trump fulfills a key campaign promise by bulldozing Biden-era green energy initiatives, the data reported by Axios indicates that Democrats are now shrinking away from a multi-trillion-dollar policy they once widely championed.
“When we first introduced the Green New Deal, we were told that our vision for the future was too aspirational. Four years later, we see core tenets of the Green New Deal reflected in the Inflation Reduction Act — the largest ever federal investment in fighting climate change, with a focus on creating good, green jobs,” Democratic New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio Cortez said when reintroducing the Green New Deal in 2023 with Democratic Massachusetts Sen. Ed Markey. “But there is still much, much more to do to make environmental justice the center of U.S. climate policy.”
Though Cortez and Markey re-introduced the legislation in 2023, they have not done so in this session. While former President Joe Biden’s 2022 Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) included a multitude of green energy subsidies that mirror the Green New Deal, some Democrats argued that the bill did not go far enough on climate issues.
Several Congressional Democrats touted their support for the Green New Deal in 2020, and many called on Biden to enact a national climate emergency in 2022, including Markey. Only a few stragglers, like Democratic West Virginia Sen. Joe Manchin, consistently opposed massive climate legislation despite intense pressure coming from other Congressional Democrats.
One recent poll revealed that most Americans are not especially concerned about climate change, while some Democrats told Politico in June that their party had “lost the culture war on climate” and will need to rebrand their approach to the issue. Additionally, one 2023 Pew Research poll found that most Americans are reluctant to completely phase out fossil fuels, and that climate change is not a top priority relative to the economy or health care.
Trump has pledged to go after remaining loopholes for the Biden-era IRA green energy subsidies, while his administration has ended “preferential treatment” for wind energy and slashed environmental justice offices to return agencies to their original missions.
Over the same three-month period in which Democrats hardly mentioned the term, Republicans reportedly talked about the Green New Deal 337 times as President Donald Trump continues to target Biden-era climate initiatives he’s termed the “Green New Scam,” according to Axios. Congressional Republicans also moved to phase out IRA green energy tax credits in the One Big Beautiful Bill Act.
“We’re at a remarkable point in the evolution of climate and it’s definitely trending downward right now. But nothing’s over,” senior legal fellow at the Energy and Environment Legal Institute Steve Milloy told the DCNF previously. “Climate-change crazed Democrats “may have to lay low for a while, but they’ll be back. This is one of their best scams.”
The offices of Ocasio-Cortez and Markey did not respond to the Daily Caller News Foundation’s requests for comment.
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