[Congressional Record Volume 169, Number 153 (Thursday, September 21, 2023)]
[Senate]
[Page S4639]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                             CLIMATE CHANGE

  Mr. McCONNELL. Mr. President, now on another matter, the Biden 
administration announced yesterday that it is seeking new recruits in 
its war on affordable and reliable American energy to fill the ranks of 
a new program called American Climate Corps.
  While the administration works overtime to freeze sensible 
development like energy pipelines, its latest initiative would, 
essentially, set up a taxpayer-funded pipeline for turning climate 
activists into climate bureaucrats.
  Now, President Biden's nostalgia for FDR's New Deal is already well-
documented. So setting aside the absurdity of Washington Democrats' 
fixation with the Green New Deal, it would be hard to imagine an 
economic moment less well-suited to a new Depression-era work program.
  This isn't the early 1930s, when the American people were up against 
high unemployment and low inflation. In fact, what the Democrats' 
runaway spending has dumped on working families today is just the 
opposite. For 2 years now, we have historic inflation and a record 
labor shortage.

  This is such a profoundly tone-deaf idea it couldn't even earn the 
support of the President's own party here in the Senate during votes on 
Democrats' so-called Inflation Reduction Act last year. Not a single 
one of our colleagues joined Senator Sanders in voting for his 
amendment to create a climate work project on the taxpayers' dime.
  Apparently, that hasn't deterred President Biden or the leftwing 
activists behind the wheel of his administration's energy policies.
  As working families struggle to afford gas, electricity, and 
groceries, the advice from wealthy blue State liberals is, apparently, 
to shell out for an expensive electric car and foot the bill for the 
so-called Climate Corps.
  There is no Hoover Dam or Lincoln Tunnel on the other side of this 
nonsense spending, just Potemkin jobs and a new make-work program when 
there is plenty of work to go around.
  Activists are calling it climate justice. But it doesn't sound like 
justice to the working families trying to get by President Biden's 
watch.

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