Empower Wisconsin | May 6. 2020

By M.D. Kittle 

MADISON —Wisconsin business owners and workers see COVID-19 as a deadly, destructive force. 

Joe Biden sees the pandemic as “an opportunity.” 

The former vice president and the Democratic Party’s presumptive candidate for president, recently told wealthy donors that he’s “excited” about the possibilities the crisis affords for radical, progressive change.  

“I believe, because, sort of, the blinders have been taken off, because of this COVID crisis, I think people are realizing, ‘My Lord, look at what is possible. Look at the institutional changes we can make,’” Biden said. 

And part of those changes, for far left-pandering Joe Biden, is inflicting the economically disastrous Green New Deal on a nation and an economy already reeling from the painful coronavirus-driven shutdown. 

At an Earth Day virtual fundraiser, he tossed in a little social justice warrior rhetoric, too, for good measure. 

“COVID is shining a bright light on the structural racism that plagues our laws, our institutions and our culture,” the candidate said. “And it’s a wake up call, a wake up call to action to climate change overall and to climate justice.”

He’s doubling down on the Biden Climate Change plan, which embraces the Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez Green New Deal. It calls for “net zero” CO2 emissions by 2050, a plan with its myriad government mandates that could throttle Wisconsin’s economy. 

The Biden plan could cost nearly 100,000 Wisconsin jobs, according a report from the American Petroleum Institute. The oil and gas industry’s annual impact on the state is estimated at $8.4 billion. 

Wisconsin households would pay more than $75,000 in the first year of the Green New Deal’s implementation, nearly double the state’s annual mean wage, according to a study by the Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI) and Power the Future and the Wisconsin Institute for Law & Liberty. 

The same study found the radical proposal would cost Wisconsin’s struggling dairy industry $2.56 billion, or about $2,000 per cow. 

“Joe Biden’s obsession with the Green New Deal highlights his socialist agenda that could not be more out-of-touch with Wisconsin. Only a Washington, D.C. politician would try to use a global pandemic as an ‘opportunity’ to push outrageous climate policies,” Trump campaign spokewoman Anna Kelly said in a statement.

Biden insists the pandemic is opening up the eyes of Americans to the benefits of radical change. That will be a hard sell for the 30 million-plus people who have already lost their jobs thanks to one disaster.