The Washington Post - 23.08.2019

A2 EZ SU THE WASHINGTON POST.FRIDAY, AUGUST 23 , 2019

HAPPENING TODAY

For the latest updates all day, visit washingtonpost.com.

All day | Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe travels to Paris to attend
the Group of Seven summit. For developments, visit washingtonpost.com/
world.

10 a.m. | Fed Chair Jerome H. Powell speaks at a Federal Reserve Bank of
Kansas City symposium in Wyoming. Visit washingtonpost.com/business
for details.

10 a.m. | Defense Secretary Mark T. Esper honors 15 recipients of the
Secretary of Defense Employer Support Freedom Award. For
developments, visit washingtonpost.com/national.

10 a.m. | The Commerce Department issues new-home sales for July,
which are estimated at 645,000 units on an annual basis. Visit
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CORRECTIONS

The headline on an Aug. 22

Page One article about the

historic Aberdeen Gardens

community in Hampton, Va.,

incorrectly said that its roots

stretch to the first Africans in

America. Its roots stretch to

some of the earliest Africans in

America, specifically the first

documented enslaved Africans

who arrived in the English

colonies 400 years ago this

month.

 An Aug. 21 A-section article

about an employee at the British

Consulate in Hong Kong

disappearing while returning

from mainland China

misidentified the legal provision

that governs diplomatic relations

between states. It is the Vienna

Convention, not the Geneva

Conventions.

KLMNO

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BY HAILEY FUCHS

AND MICHAEL SCHERER

chico, calif. — Sen. Bernie
Sanders proposed a $16.3 trillion
climate plan Thursday, an expan-
sive blueprint meant to enlarge
American ambitions on combat-
ing planetary warming in a presi-
dential campaign already marked
by aggressive Democratic ap-
proaches.
The Sanders proposal, like his
plan to replace private health in-
surance with a federal system,
envisions a significant expansion
of the government’s role in the
economy. He would offer billions
in subsidies to replace gas-
guzzling vehicles with electric
ones by 2030, a new public system
of clean electricity generation that
could sideline private utilities,
and an infrastructure program
that would remake much of the
economy and employ an estimat-
ed 20 million more Americans.
The sheer scale of the effort —
which the independent from Ver-
mont compares to Franklin D.
Roosevelt’s 1940s mobilization to
fight World War II — was central
to his message in rolling out the
plan. Averaging more than
$1.6 trillion a year for 10 years, the
new program would dwarf the
entire annual U.S. discretionary
budget, which was about $1.3 tril-
lion in 2018, and would amount to
more than double the current mil-
itary budget.
“People are telling me, ‘Bernie,
the plan you just released to com-
bat climate change is expensive.’
And you know what? They’re right
— it is expensive. But the cost of
doing nothing is far more expen-
sive,” he said at a community cen-
ter here before a crowd of about

700. “The scientists have told us
     that the cost of inaction on climate
     change will put the entire planet,
     and life as we know it on Earth, in
     serious jeopardy.”
     The proposal fits Sanders’s pat-
     tern of staking out positions that
     mark the liberal edge of the Demo-

cratic field. The strategy risks

alienating centrists in the primary

and general elections, but it could

also boost Sanders’s self-depiction

as the true revolutionary in the

field.

Sanders advisers say the initial

spending would not recur after

the first decade, and would be

funded by a broad array of

sources, including new revenue

from electricity customers, new

corporate taxes, cuts in military

spending, and awards from litiga-

tion against fossil fuel companies.

“It’s much more European-style

democratic socialism than what

anyone else is offering,” said Carl

Pope, a former executive director

of the Sierra Club who now works

on climate policy for former New

York mayor Michael R. Bloom-

berg. “This is the most expansive

attempt to take on the conceptual

framework for the Green New

Deal.”

The Green New Deal is a cli-

mate change plan promoted by

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez

(D-N.Y.) and other lawmakers, but

it emphasizes broad goals rather

than presenting a detailed policy

menu.

Sanders’s plan comes as Demo-

crats are significantly shifting

their approach to environmental

issues. As recently as 2012, Barack

Obama ran for reelection on an

“all of the above” energy strategy

that included a role for coal-burn-

ing power plants. Now most can-

didates running for president say

their goal is to move beyond fossil

fuels altogether.

The new dynamic is driven by a

confluence of factors pushing cli-

mate concerns into the top tier of

issues for Democratic voters.

New recommendations from

the Intergovernmental Panel on

Climate Change call for “rapid,

far-reaching” changes to curb

emissions. Severe floods and wild-

fires over the last year have raised

concerns about immediate effects

of changing temperatures. And

President Trump, who has called

climate change a “hoax” and said

he does not believe his own gov-

ernment’s warnings about its like-

ly economic impact, has also pro-

voked backlash among liberal vot-

ers.

A broad array of Democratic

presidential candidates — includ-

ing former congressman Beto

O’Rourke (Tex.), former vice presi-

dent Joe Biden and Sens. Michael

F. Bennet (Colo.) and Amy Klobu-

char (Minn.) — have embraced the

goal of net-zero carbon emissions

by 2050, which Sanders uses to

frame his plan. Sen. Elizabeth

Warren (Mass.) has proposed a

large federally backed green-

energy manufacturing program.

But the price tags for taxpayers

are far lower under the other can-

didates’ plans, which depend

more on private-sector invest-

ment.

Sanders advisers say that direct

government investment would be

a surer way of meeting the 2050

goals than trying to predict

private-sector investments, and

that they hope his climate plan

will reshape the party’s discussion

of global warming.

“Like Bernie’s other proposals

that people once said were too

radical and are now central to the

Democratic platform, Bernie will

always propose the true solution

to what we face, despite the wrath

of Wall Street or the political

squashiness of others,” said Josh

Orton, national policy director for

the Sanders campaign.

Still, there is no clear route for

many of these plans to make it

through the current Congress,

especially the Republican-con-

trolled Senate. Divisions within

the Democratic Party could also

imperil dramatic climate action

even if the party regains control of

both branches of government.

“I see these proposals as both

markers and mobilizing tools,”

said Jody Freeman, who was a

climate adviser to Obama and

now teaches at Harvard Law

School. “They are a marker that

says, ‘We care about climate

change. We really, really do.’ And

they are a mobilizing tool because

we are in a primary and the idea is

to try to attract the left side of the

spectrum.”

Climate activists who have

been pushing for broad environ-

mental policy changes cheered

the sweep of the Sanders proposal.

“I think Bernie Sanders’s plan

that he released today really raises

the bar,” said Evan Weber, political

director of the Sunrise Movement,

a youth protest effort that has

helped elevate the issue of climate

change. “It is the biggest, boldest

and most ambitious plan we have

seen in the fields so far.”

Republicans have long argued

that Democratic plans to fight cli-

mate change would hurt the econ-

omy, raising energy prices and

pushing workers out of jobs. In

response, Democrats have recast

their proposals as stimulus mea-

sures.

Sanders’s plan includes $1.3 bil-

lion to provide fossil fuel industry

workers economic assistance, in-

cluding job placement, and

$15 billion for coal miner pensions

and disability assistance for black

lung disease.

Sanders would invest nearly

$15 billion to support local gro-

cery stores and cooperatives,

$36 billion for “victory lawns and

gardens,” and $31 billion to make

food processing — including meat

slaughter and dairy processing —

less concentrated and more local.

The plan also calls for $410 billion

to be spent on making agricultur-

al practices more environmental-

ly friendly.

Unlike some other candidates,

Sanders would seek to phase out

nuclear electricity generation,

which produces about 20 percent

of the U.S. supply, by barring new

construction and declining li-

cense renewals. He also rules out

using carbon capture technology,

which many environmentalists

see as a necessary to deal with

certain heavy-manufacturing

emissions.

Some Democratic strategists

worry that the sweep of some

Democratic plans could spook

voters.

“If Americans are scared that

this is going to negatively impact

their economy, they will not be

supportive of the most ambitious

climate plan and they won’t be

supportive of the Democratic

nominee,” said Christy Goldfuss, a

scholar at the Center for American

Progress who worked on climate

policy in the Obama White House.

For the moment, the Democrat-

ic field is more focused on compet-

ing for liberal primary voters. In a

June poll of likely Iowa caucus-

goers, three out of four said “rec-

ognition of climate change as the

greatest threat to humanity” was a

necessary qualification for a can-

didate.

[email protected]

[email protected]

Sanders unveils $16.3 trillion climate plan that would reshape U.S. economy

JUSTIN SULLIVAN/GETTY IMAGES

Traffic moves through an interchange along Interstate 580 in Oakland, Calif. Billions in subsidies for

electric vehicles are among the planks of the climate plan released by Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.).

BY VANESSA WILLIAMS

The Democratic Association of

Secretaries of State is launching

an initiative to try to wrest con-

trol of those offices from Republi-

cans, who the group claims have

used their power to make it hard-

er for certain demographics to

vote.

Buoyed by successes last year

in Arizona, Colorado and Michi-

gan, the group has set its sights on

flipping five more states in 2020.

In addition to recruiting and sup-

porting Democratic candidates,

the association is planning a pub-

lic education campaign on the

importance of secretaries of state,

who oversee the election process

in most states.

The offices of governor, U.S.

senator and attorney general tend

to get more attention in statewide

elections than that of secretary of

state. But Alex Padilla, Califor-

nia’s secretary of state and the

head of the association, said Re-

publicans understand the influ-

ence of the office and have used it

unfairly to their party’s advan-

tage.

“For all of the talk about taking

back the White House and the

Senate, all the important races

that people tend to focus more on,

in my mind it starts with making

elections fair again,” Padilla said.

He said Republican secretaries

of state not only facilitate more-

restrictive policies for voters but

also have mostly remained silent

as President Trump and Senate

Majority Leader Mitch McCon-

nell (R-Ky.) have played down or

blocked efforts to address Rus-

sian interference in U.S. elections.

Padilla said that instead of en-

couraging more people to vote,

Republicans have sought to “limit

or control the electorate... to tilt

the scales in their favor by exclud-

ing voters who are disproportion-

ately lower-income, dispropor-

tionately from communities of

color, disproportionately young.”

In a video ad for the initiative,

Padilla says: “The threat is real.

Republican secretaries of state

are helping Trump wage a Jim

Crow-style assault on our voting

rights.”

The Democratic Association of

Secretaries of State hopes to un-

seat Republicans in Missouri,

Montana, Oregon, Washington

and West Virginia next year and

will work to reelect Democratic

secretaries in North Carolina and

Vermont. Padilla said the group

also will support Democrats in

races this fall in Kentucky, Louisi-

ana and Mississippi. Republicans

currently have a 25-to-22 advan-

tage among secretaries of state.

The office does not exist in Alas-

ka, Hawaii and Utah.

The effort comes at a time

when the integrity of the nation’s

electoral system is under scrutiny

by both Democrats and Trump.

House Democrats in June passed

an election security bill to protect

the nation’s voting system from

foreign interference, but McCon-

nell has refused to bring it up for a

vote in the Senate. Trump falsely

claimed that millions of illegal

votes were cast in 2016, and short-

ly after he took office, he appoint-

ed a commission to study voter

fraud. But many secretaries of

state, including some Republi-

cans, refused to turn over their

states’ voter rolls, and the body

disbanded without offering any

evidence of widespread fraud.

Since 2013, when the Supreme

Court weakened the federal Vot-

ing Rights Act, many states with

Republican-controlled legisla-

tures have enacted stricter laws

for voter registration and voter

identification and cut back on

early voting hours and polling

places. Those rules often dispro-

portionately affect people of col-

or, young people and low-income

people, groups that tend to vote

for Democrats and liberals.

Democrats say such policies

amount to voter suppression. Re-

publicans argue that stricter laws

are needed to guard against voter

fraud, though studies have found

no evidence of widespread voter

fraud in the United States.

Jason Snead, a policy analyst

with the conservative Heritage

Foundation, dismissed the notion

of voter suppression in an inter-

view last week after former Geor-

gia gubernatorial candidate Stac-

ey Abrams announced an initia-

tive to help Democrats set up

voter protection operations in 20

states next year.

“I simply do not see any evi-

dence of voter suppression and do

not subscribe to the notion that

election integrity measures con-

stitute voter suppression,” Snead

said.

He said requiring people to

show identification to vote and

routinely purging from voter rolls

the names of people who have not

cast ballots in years are reason-

able safeguards.

“I don’t think they’re designed

in any way to disenfranchise vot-

ers, and I don’t think they have

that effect,” he said.

Republicans and conservative

activists have criticized Padilla

for problems with last year’s

launch of California’s “motor vot-

er” program, including about

84,000 duplicate registrations,

inaccurate party affiliations and

about 1,500 ineligible people who

were registered to vote. Some

GOP lawmakers and conservative

activists have blamed some mid-

term losses for the glitches.

Former U.S. attorney general

Eric H. Holder Jr., who heads the

National Democratic Redistrict-

ing Committee, is also contribut-

ing to the effort to flip secretaries

of state. Republicans, whose

numbers are shrinking in relation

to those of Democrats as a result

of demographic changes, he said,

are trying to hold on to power by

making it more difficult for an

increasingly diverse electorate to

vote.

“It’s un-American and unpatri-

otic,” he said.

“Our election system is the

bedrock of the democratic proc-

ess,” Holder said. “If their power

is unchecked, Republican secre-

taries of state will undermine our

elections and ultimately under-

mine our democracy.”

The debate over how states run

elections ignited last year in

Georgia when Republican Brian

Kemp refused to step down as

secretary of state while running

for governor. During Kemp’s ten-

ure, more than 1.4 million voters

were purged from the rolls and

tens of thousands of people had

their registrations put on hold for

minor discrepancies or because

application processing was arbi-

trarily cut off. Kemp was ordered

by the courts multiple times to

reverse or revise such policies.

Abrams, the Democratic nomi-

nee, called Kemp the “architect of

voter suppression” and cited

widespread voting irregularities

for her narrow defeat. She formed

the voter protection initiative

Fair Fight and filed a federal

lawsuit alleging that the state

“grossly mismanaged” the 2018

election, calling for improve-

ments to how the state runs its

elections — from how it registers

voters to how it counts ballots.

[email protected]

Democrats push to flip 5 secretary of state o∞ces

MELINA MARA/THE WASHINGTON POST

A billboard in Flint, Mich., reminds people on Oct. 28 to vote in the approaching midterm elections.

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