Issue Position: Green New Deal

Issue Position

Matt supports a Green New Deal similar to the Depression era policies of Franklin Roosevelt that built large public works projects to get Americans back to work with jobs that pay a living wage. The Green New Deal will repair and improve our crumbling national infrastructure, invest in energy conservation improvements to our public and commercial buildings as well as our homes. It will also invest in renewable energy projects, and mass transit to meet the needs of our communities.

The Green New Deal is absolutely essential to America's future as an economic power. Our infrastructure has been in serious decline for much of the last 40 years. We have had Interstate Highway Bridges which span the Mississippi River collapse during rush hour traffic. The American Society of Civil Engineers has suggested that it would take an investment of at least $1 Trillion to bring our crumbling roads, bridges, airports, ports, rail roads, electrical grid, and communications infrastructure back into good repair. The United States should invest in repairing and upgrading our infrastructure, including retrofitting our government buildings, commercial buildings, and homes to improve energy efficiency.

The Green New Deal will create several million living wage jobs. These jobs will help to stimulate the growth of new businesses with the spending these workers will pump into our economy, but the Green New Deal will also improve the efficiency of our economy overall by repairing an aging infrastructure that costs American businesses in terms of lost productivity. Our deteriorated roads mean that our trucking fleets and cars spend more time in the repair shop than they need to and cost workers and businesses extra money to pay for the repairs that result from road damage.

Our aging electrical grid means that a sizable portion of the power our electrical plants produce is wasted during transmission. Our inadequate telephone lines in much of rural America means that entrepreneurs who would like to begin new technology companies often need to move to the city to start those businesses, but an investment in fiber optic lines, like the investment the universal service fee provided to rural America with copper telephone lines during the 1930s, could mean an explosion of technology startups in rural America like Frazer Computing, Inc. in Canton, New York.

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