America's Talking - New Bill Would Block Biden’s Equity ‘Climate Corps’ Army

Episode Date: November 5, 2023

U.S. Rep. Bob Good, R-Va., will introduce legislation Friday to block President Joe Biden’s “Climate Corps.” The bill, given in advance to The Center Square, would “prohibit federal funds from being made available for the Justice40 Initiative or for the American Climate Corps.” Biden announced in September he was formally creating the Climate Corps, promising to hire a “diverse generation” of 20,000 workers to improve the environment. Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/america-in-focus/support Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Hello and welcome to America in Focus, powered by the Center Square. I'm Dan McAulam, Vice President of News and content at the Franklin News Foundation, publisher of the Center Square Newswire service. Joining me today, as he does each and every week, is the Center Square's Washington, D.C. Bureau Chief Casey Harper. How are you, Casey? Doing good, Dan. How are you? I am doing well, thank you. We are recording this on Friday, November 3rd. Just today, Casey, U.S. Representative Bob Good, a Republican from Virginia. Virginia is introducing legislation to block President Joe Biden's Climate Corps. The bill, which you got a copy of in advance of the filing, would prohibit federal funds from being made available for the Justice 40 initiative or for the American Climate Corps. Casey, what is the Climate Corps and why should this matter to our listeners? Yeah, I mean, there's a few reasons.

Of course, there's a big taxpayer angle here. To take a step back, President Joe Biden tried to get, you know, the, the numbers changed, but $30 billion for this climate core to, um, in passing legislation, uh, it was almost, you know, basically it started in the build back better act, but was stripped out, right? Um, now what is the climate core? The climate core is basically Biden's attempt to hire tens of thousands of young people to work on climate change and, like, racial equity issues. That's the one Senate summary to have thousands and thousands of young people, who work for the federal government in a kind of ideological purview in that sense and also to work on

environmental issues. So this was, you know, you might, some of you might say that sounds great. Some of you could immediately see controversy in that and Congress saw controversy in it as well. And so it was stripped out. Now, time has gone by and Biden received a lot of pressure from certain lawmakers like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who's become kind of notorious at this point. AOC. Yeah, AOC is sent it. Thanks, Dan. Thank you. Sent a letter to Biden. That's why. Yeah, yeah. No, I got you. No. Who knows your full name? Yeah. You knows it. It's, I do. I do. But AOC and others sent a letter to Biden really pushing him on this issue. And so September, he just announced that the climate core was going, he was creating it. And for me, this is kind of a head scratcher. It's because like, wait a minute, where is he getting this money? This is taxpayer money. Where is. is coming from. So I've been digging into it. And now I got this bill, as you said. And basically,

he just created it by press release. So, I mean, he just... Congress didn't approve it is what you're saying. No, not explicitly. And now the House Oversight Committee is looking into it. You know, how much federal money is being spent on this? Where is the money coming from? Is it being come from other things that Congress did authorize? Just basically wanting to make sure that Biden isn't violating the power of the purse, which belongs to Congress to delegate, you know, to divvy this money out. And so that sets aside the fact whether you think it's a good idea to have 20,000 equity warriors, young people hired by the federal government going around and talking about environmental justice. What is the climate core? What is it, I mean, what is it supposed to do? How does equity relate

to environment? Well, this is kind of a theme with everything the Biden administration does. there's almost always some kind of equity angle. They can announce any program, but it has to slide in that it's going to be equitable. It's going to fight discrimination. This has kind of just become a part of the Democrat playbook at this point. I'm trying to think of a parallel on the Republican side. It would be like, no matter what you do, you have to say that this is a constitutional thing, or it's going to create jobs.

A Republican might always say that this is going to create jobs and cut regulation, no matter what the proposal is. And I think this has become the Democratic equivalent of this is going to advance equity. And so it's talking a lot about environmental justice. The EPA defines environmental justice as making sure that negative environmental externalities from corporations and things like that don't disproportionately impact certain groups. So basically that there's not a lot of pollution in black neighborhoods but not in white neighborhoods, basically. that's one way that environmental justice could play out they don't i think it's interesting they don't talk

about the making sure that the loss of jobs doesn't impact one group over the others right because if you shut down all these coal mines it's probably going to affect a lot of young white men in appalachia or something like that or where i grew up in texas um if you shut down the ore rigs there's a lot of guys who feed their families with that so there's there's different ways to look at this issue but the Climate Corps, I mean, it really is, it's kind of like AmeriCorps. You know, you join up or you can even think of like Teach for America or something where a young person signs up to do good for the world and make a little bit of money and save the planet before they, you know, right out of college before they kind of go on and get married and live the rest of their life. And the climate core is a lot like that. But instead, it's paid for by the taxpayer and it's focused on equity and climate change. And there's a lot of different ways that can look. But, you know, Some of it's conservation. Some of it is kind of things, you know, helping wetlands and protecting communities from storm surges and flooding, working on clean energy forest management. Some of these things sound pretty down the middle.

But the more you look into it, I've looked at all the documents. Go ahead. My thought was, aren't there already agencies that exist to do all, everything you just described, protect wetlands, forests, things like that. So this is a separate agency that's going to do the same thing as these other agencies? Right, and he's pulling the funding. It looks like Biden's going to pull the funding from those other agencies to create this. And so, you know, whether you agree with this idea or not, one thing that's really, I think, makes it worth talking about is one, the president seems to have created a new agency by Fiat, which is really something presidents can't do. They have to have approval from Congress and funding from Congress. So he's created this new program by Fiat, this new agency, and he's pulling from other agencies that do related work to justify it and to find the money. The second reason it's important is calling it a climate core, but it has this deep strain of kind of racial progressive politics woven into it, which is, you know, highly controversial nowadays. And so, yeah. I was going to just say, so Representative Good introduced this in the House.

Republicans have a slight majority in the House. But it's prospect. I mean, so let's say it passes the House to prevent Biden from doing this. Then it goes to the Senate where Democrats have a slight majority. What are its pros? And I'm sure if it ever got to Biden's desk, he would veto it. So what are, its prospects probably aren't very good. Yeah, not in this Congress, but I think even just based on like the questions we're talking about here,

this is something that Biden, I think a little bit got away with. And no one even knows about it. When you say, what is the climate core? You know, I don't think people know this issue. So we're still in the raising awareness issue. I think that's why this story is really worth reading at the center square.com. Because I think most of our listeners, maybe this is the first time they're hearing about it. But some really big things happen here.

The president created an agency on his own. He pulled from other agencies to do it. According to him, it could cost tens of billions of dollars to make this thing happen. And it's got this really controversial ideology woven into it. And so I think right now they're just trying to raise awareness. This Congress, it could pass the House. I think it could be hard for some Senate Democrats to defend this. There's a reason it was not included in the original legislation, right?

I think they were a little worried about it. So forcing them to talk about it, forcing them to defend it. And if the House Oversight Committee finds that Biden was kind of violated some statute in the way he created it, the courts could actually strike it down. Yeah, I'm going to admit to you, Casey. I'm in the news business. That's what I do. It feels like 24-7 nowadays with everything going on in the world and Washington, D.C., etc.

And I didn't know about this until you pitched it. Just ahead of the news. That's right. That's right. That's why you're appreciated, Casey. All right. Final comments, Casey, before we have to close. Yeah, I think just to stay on top of the story, the centersquare.com, we're going to do some follow-ups. We're going to keep up with this House oversight investigation and see where exactly this money is coming from. And if Biden violated separation of powers by just creating this agency. So stay tuned. Thank you for your insight. Casey, listeners, as Casey has said, can keep up with the story and more. at thecentersquare.com for Casey Harper. I'm Dan McCaleb. Please subscribe and thank you for listening.