WHY ELEVEN YOUNG PEOPLE WERE ARRESTED OUTSIDE JOSH GOTTHEIMER’S HOME TODAY
Thanks to a handful of self-interested politicians, key climate provisions in the reconciliation bill, namely the Clean Energy Performance Program and the Civilian Climate Corps, are at risk of being slashed altogether. One of these politicians is Representative Josh Gottheimer of New Jersey (NJ-05) and we rallied outside of his home today to tell him enough is enough.
For the last few months, Gottheimer and a group of 8 other representatives vying for the “moderate” label, have been undermining the Democratic party’s widely popular goals by threatening to vote against the Build Back Better (BBB) Act unless the Bipartisan Infrastructure plan (BIF) is voted on first. Decoupling the bills goes against Nancy Pelosi and Joe Biden’s vow to pass both at same time to ensure the central climate and social initiatives make it through.
As Alex Shepherd of The New Republic writes, the original plan to vote on September 27 was an attempt to quell everyone’s concerns: the Democrats’ progressive plans, which Biden built his campaign around, would be passed through the BBB, while the passage of the BIF would appease moderate and conservative lawmakers. Now, that plan is out the window and the votes for both have been delayed.
Gottheimer claims to be motivated by a concern for American workers, publicly stating “the idea that we’d let any faction of Democratic Party stop the president’s agenda on infrastructure and stop those shovels in the ground and helping people just doesn’t make any sense to me.” But if they pass the BIF without the Build Back Better Act, Gottheimer and his own faction of moderate Dems have complete leverage to decimate bold commitments around climate, child care, union work, and more. Weakening or eliminating those measures altogether would be much more harmful to workers than any delays in passing the BIF.
Cutting back the proposed tax increases on corporations and the country’s richest people is at the crux of Gottheimer and his crew’s efforts to hijack negotiations. These tax hikes on the wealthy are a predominant means of funding the country’s largest federal investments since the New Deal era, and Gottheimer’s eagerness to prevent them comes as no surprise given his close ties to the private equity industry: top executives of the private equity firm, the Blackstone Group, are some of Gottheimer’s largest campaign donors.
Not only would the sector face higher taxes overall should the BBB become law, it would also be poised to lose major tax loopholes it has exploited in the past, such as the so-called “carried interest” loophole. But if only the BIF is passed, the industry could actually gain a lot due to the bill’s reliance on private financing for public infrastructure projects, a strategy which was only implemented after lobbying from a trade association affiliated with Blackstone.
The sabotage is comparable to Joe Manchin’s power trip in the Senate, where he and Kyrsten Sinema have complete determination over the final climate measures in the Build Back Better Act as the Democrats’ fringe voters who determine whether their threadbare majority carries any weight. As I outlined in a previous article, Manchin has personal financial stakes in sabotaging climate measures and, like Gottheimer, Sinema has received donations from industries that could lose a lot if the Build Back Better Act passes. The combined efforts of Manchin, Sinema, and the Gottheimer cabal are effectively dictating the country’s trajectory, and the fate of the entire world’s climate along with it, due to their selfishness, political cowardice, and eagerness to abuse their outsized authority.
We protested their dastardly behavior on behalf of the public majority and billions of young people whose futures grow less and less certain each day that corrupt politicians and their industry counterparts fail to prioritize the climate crisis. We demanded that elected officials like Representative Gottheimer stand up for their constituents and their futures by passing the Build Back Better Act with key climate provisions in the bill, especially the Clean Energy Performance Program and the Civilian Climate Corps.
