Harris silent on her 2019 pledge to ‘get rid of the filibuster to pass a Green New Deal’
Vice President Kamala Harris, who this week pledged to suspend the Senate filibuster to pass abortion legislation, won’t say if she will do the same to pass the multitrillion-dollar progressive Green New Deal, a promise she made during her failed 2020 presidential campaign.
“As president of the United States, I am prepared to get rid of the filibuster to pass a Green New Deal,” Harris said in 2019, responding to how she would “build trust” with Republicans “dependent on a fossil fuel economy.” Harris’s campaign failed to respond to an Axios inquiry this week asking if the Democratic nominee still supports her previous position.
On Tuesday, Harris said she still supports “eliminat[ing] the filibuster for Roe,” a position that lost her the endorsement of Sen. Joe Manchin (I., W.Va.). Manchin, who left the Democratic Party in May but still caucuses with Democrats, had signaled earlier this month that he would endorse Harris but he said gutting the filibuster will “destroy our country.”
Without a filibuster, Senate Democrats would only need a simple majority of 51 votes to pass the Green New Deal rather than a 60-vote supermajority.
Harris, who cosponsored the Green New Deal as a senator, gave a vague answer on where she stands on the proposal when asked last month.
“The most important and most significant aspect of my policy perspective and decisions is that my values have not changed,” Harris said in an August CNN interview. “You mentioned the Green New Deal. I have always believed, and I have worked on it, that the climate crisis is real, that it is an urgent matter to which we should apply metrics that include holding ourselves to deadlines around time.”
A top Harris surrogate said the vice president will embrace the progressive environmental policy if elected in November. Rep. Ro Khanna (D., Calif.) declared that the Green New Deal “will be the vision under President Harris” in his remarks at the Democratic National Convention.
Since Harris became the Democratic nominee in July, her campaign has walked back several key policies from her 2020 presidential campaign with little explanation, such as giving two million illegal immigrants a pathway to citizenship, passing Medicare for All, and banning fracking.
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