Conservative Think Tank Says GND Would Cost $93 Trillion

MHJ/Getty

Fight disinformation: Sign up for the free Mother Jones Daily newsletter and follow the news that matters.

Various conservatives have latched onto a recent report from the American Action Forum to claim that the Green New Deal will cost $93 trillion. How did they get that number? Easy. The AAF report estimates GND costs of $53-94 trillion over ten years, so conservative activists just took the high number. And then cut it by $1 trillion for some reason. And then forgot to mention that this is a ten-year cost.

As it happens, nearly all of the $93 trillion cost comes from two things: universal health care and a jobs guarantee. The other items, which are the ones that actually fight climate change, clock in at $10-14 trillion, or about $1 trillion per year. Is that a fair estimate? Nobody knows.

More generally, though, is it even fair to attempt an estimate in the first place? After all, the GND famously lacks any details on which to judge this stuff. Because of this, climate hawks are crying foul.

But this is naive. If this were a conservative proposal about, say, defense spending, plenty of liberal think tanks would take a best-guess at the cost even if the proposal was vague. This is just how things work, and not only because it’s politically expedient. It’s also the case that people are curious. Even if it’s just a ballpark estimate, plenty of people can’t help themselves from giving it a go.

And after all, what did the GND folks expect? They’re the ones who stuffed their document with everything but the kitchen sink. Did they seriously think that everyone would hold back on cost estimates out of a sense of fair play or something? If they did, they’re morons. Of course opponents are going to try to put a number on it. And if you’re not willing to fight back with your own number, then you’ve left the field wide open to the opposition.

This puts the GND folks in a pickle. They can’t fight back with their own number, because they know that any semi-reasonable number is going to be really high. Maybe not $93 trillion over ten years, but still pretty high. These are just fundamentally expensive programs they’ve proposed.

This is the downside of proposing a big, comprehensive program. Yes, a big program is what the world needs. We are, after all, trying to stave off planetary suicide. But if you insist on a big, comprehensive program, then it’s going to have big, comprehensive costs. Can you whip up public support even when opponents throw these costs in your face? If you can’t, then your program is a dead letter. So you better figure out how to deal with this.

WE'LL BE BLUNT

It is astonishingly hard keeping a newsroom afloat these days, and we need to raise $253,000 in online donations quickly, by October 7.

The short of it: Last year, we had to cut $1 million from our budget so we could have any chance of breaking even by the time our fiscal year ended in June. And despite a huge rally from so many of you leading up to the deadline, we still came up a bit short on the whole. We can’t let that happen again. We have no wiggle room to begin with, and now we have a hole to dig out of.

Readers also told us to just give it to you straight when we need to ask for your support, and seeing how matter-of-factly explaining our inner workings, our challenges and finances, can bring more of you in has been a real silver lining. So our online membership lead, Brian, lays it all out for you in his personal, insider account (that literally puts his skin in the game!) of how urgent things are right now.

The upshot: Being able to rally $253,000 in donations over these next few weeks is vitally important simply because it is the number that keeps us right on track, helping make sure we don't end up with a bigger gap than can be filled again, helping us avoid any significant (and knowable) cash-flow crunches for now. We used to be more nonchalant about coming up short this time of year, thinking we can make it by the time June rolls around. Not anymore.

Because the in-depth journalism on underreported beats and unique perspectives on the daily news you turn to Mother Jones for is only possible because readers fund us. Corporations and powerful people with deep pockets will never sustain the type of journalism we exist to do. The only investors who won’t let independent, investigative journalism down are the people who actually care about its future—you.

And we need readers to show up for us big time—again.

Getting just 10 percent of the people who care enough about our work to be reading this blurb to part with a few bucks would be utterly transformative for us, and that's very much what we need to keep charging hard in this financially uncertain, high-stakes year.

If you can right now, please support the journalism you get from Mother Jones with a donation at whatever amount works for you. And please do it now, before you move on to whatever you're about to do next and think maybe you'll get to it later, because every gift matters and we really need to see a strong response if we're going to raise the $253,000 we need in less than three weeks.

payment methods

WE'LL BE BLUNT

It is astonishingly hard keeping a newsroom afloat these days, and we need to raise $253,000 in online donations quickly, by October 7.

The short of it: Last year, we had to cut $1 million from our budget so we could have any chance of breaking even by the time our fiscal year ended in June. And despite a huge rally from so many of you leading up to the deadline, we still came up a bit short on the whole. We can’t let that happen again. We have no wiggle room to begin with, and now we have a hole to dig out of.

Readers also told us to just give it to you straight when we need to ask for your support, and seeing how matter-of-factly explaining our inner workings, our challenges and finances, can bring more of you in has been a real silver lining. So our online membership lead, Brian, lays it all out for you in his personal, insider account (that literally puts his skin in the game!) of how urgent things are right now.

The upshot: Being able to rally $253,000 in donations over these next few weeks is vitally important simply because it is the number that keeps us right on track, helping make sure we don't end up with a bigger gap than can be filled again, helping us avoid any significant (and knowable) cash-flow crunches for now. We used to be more nonchalant about coming up short this time of year, thinking we can make it by the time June rolls around. Not anymore.

Because the in-depth journalism on underreported beats and unique perspectives on the daily news you turn to Mother Jones for is only possible because readers fund us. Corporations and powerful people with deep pockets will never sustain the type of journalism we exist to do. The only investors who won’t let independent, investigative journalism down are the people who actually care about its future—you.

And we need readers to show up for us big time—again.

Getting just 10 percent of the people who care enough about our work to be reading this blurb to part with a few bucks would be utterly transformative for us, and that's very much what we need to keep charging hard in this financially uncertain, high-stakes year.

If you can right now, please support the journalism you get from Mother Jones with a donation at whatever amount works for you. And please do it now, before you move on to whatever you're about to do next and think maybe you'll get to it later, because every gift matters and we really need to see a strong response if we're going to raise the $253,000 we need in less than three weeks.

payment methods

We Recommend

Latest

Sign up for our free newsletter

Subscribe to the Mother Jones Daily to have our top stories delivered directly to your inbox.

Get our award-winning magazine

Save big on a full year of investigations, ideas, and insights.

Subscribe

Support our journalism

Help Mother Jones' reporters dig deep with a tax-deductible donation.

Donate