(TheRedAlertNews.com) – Joe Biden’s plan to turn leftist activists “into bureaucrats” by creating an “American Climate Corps” has been trashed by the top Republican in the US Senate, Mitch McConnell.
The Senate Minority Leader’s remarks came after, on Wednesday, the White House announced the new federal program established after “years of intense lobbying from environmental groups and Democratic lawmakers,” The Washington Times reports.
You can see McConnell’s remarks in a video below.
McConnell (R-KY) attacked Biden for utilizing his executive authority to set up the Climate Corps, characterized as a “New Deal-style jobs training program” that would pay salaries to 20,000 youngsters to start their “careers fighting climate change.”
“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,” McConnell said on the Senate floor Thursday.
The report points out that an earlier try by Biden to launch a similar multibillion-dollar initiative through the Democrat-sponsored legislation called the Inflation Reduction Act was unsuccessful.
“We’re opening up pathways to good-paying careers, lifetimes of being involved in the work of making our communities more fair, more sustainable, more resilient,” White House climate adviser Ali Zaidi told reporters about the “American Climate Corps.”
The Times notes much remains unclear about the program: the participants’ salaries, the types of jobs it would fund, how much it would cost, and who will pay for it.
Some of the jobs mentioned as examples include training for installing solar panels, working as electricians for green tech, or helping restore coastal wetlands.
According to the administration’s plans, AmeriCorps, an independent federal agency that will help operate the Climate Corps and the US Forest Service, will set up a $15 million Forest Corps. Under it, 80 hires will start working to “conserve national forests and grasslands” as of summer 2024.
According to McConnell, however, the Biden program is a deception to American taxpayers amid high inflation.
“There’s 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’s plenty of work to go around,” he said.
“Activists are calling it ‘climate justice.’ But it doesn’t sound like justice to the working families just trying to get by on President Biden’s watch,” the Kentucky Republican said.
