Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) said Wednesday that the chamber’s recent vote on the Green New Deal resolution was a “show vote.”
“It was,” he said when asked by Fox News host Bret Baier.
McConnell last month brought the resolution championed by Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) to the Senate floor, where no senators voted in support of the resolution. Forty-three Democratic senators voted present.
“I don’t intend to spend all of our time doing that sort of thing,” McConnell said Wednesday on Fox News’ “Special Report with Bret Baier,” referring to the show vote. “But once in a while people oughta go on record and decide whether they are willing to vote for what they say they’re for.”
{mosads}McConnell was widely criticized by Democrats for the vote, saying he was trying to “troll” them and was not serious about having a discussion on climate change policy.
Ocasio-Cortez later said she encouraged the Senate Democrats to vote “present,” saying the issue deserved a hearing before a vote.
The resolution calls for net-zero greenhouse gas emissions in the United States while creating millions of “good, high-wage jobs.”
McConnell added that he believes climate change is “certainly happening.”
“I think it ought to be addressed by technology and not by having the government shut down our economy and cost us to lose an incredible number of jobs,” he said.
-Updated 8:12 p.m.