“We must face the existential threat of our time: the climate crisis,” House Speaker Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) said in January in her opening address to Congress. “The entire Congress must work to put an end to the inaction and denial of science that threaten the planet and the future.”
But that’s for you people. See, there are different rules for Pelosi and her Democrats than there are for you, the hoi polloi.
After spending all their time trying to impeach President Trump, the Democrats in the House headed out on a two-week vacation. And what Pelosi likes to do when the House is in recess is travel the world on the taxpayers’ dime.
They’re called congressional delegations, or CoDels for short. Wiktionary gives a handy definition: “Government-paid trips abroad, designed to give lawmakers first-hand knowledge of matters relevant to their legislation.”
And perhaps they once were that. But nowadays, an awful lot of CoDels end up in Venice or Paris or Rome. Of course, CoDel participants travel first class, often in government planes, and they don’t stay at the Days Inn.
So, with the fate of America hanging in the balance, Pelosi and more than a dozen Democrats find it absolutely imperative to jet off to Madrid, Spain, to talk about … climate change.
That’s right. Pelosi was set to fly out on Sunday with a 13 other Democrats on a smoke-spewing jet or three, burning that evil fossil fuel, heading 3,781 miles across the Atlantic to the United Nations COP25 climate change conference in Madrid.
The conference, which will draw 25,000 people and 1,500 journalists, will “seek to place financial penalties on global commercial aviation to stop people flying and making ‘unnecessary contributions to atmospheric carbon dioxide pollution,'” Breitbart reports.
The members of the taxpayer-funded Pelosi Democrat delegation include:
- Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA)
- Senator Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI)
- Chairman Frank Pallone (D-NJ), Committee on Energy and Commerce
- Chairwoman Eddie Bernice Johnson (D-TX), Committee on Science, Space, Technology
- Chairman Raúl Grijalva (D-AZ), Committee on Natural Resources
- Chairwoman Kathy Castor (D-FL), Select Committee on the Climate Crisis
- Congresswoman Betty McCollum (D-MN)
- Congresswoman Suzanne Bonamici (D-OR)
- Congresswoman Julia Brownley (D-CA)
- Congressman Jared Huffman (D-CA)
- Congressman Scott Peters (D-CA)
- Congresswoman Debbie Dingell (D-MI)
- Congressman Mike Levin (D-CA)
- Congressman Sean Casten (D-IL)
- Congressman Joe Neguse (D-CO)
“On behalf of the United States Congress, I extend my gratitude to the Spanish government for hosting this critical meeting, and for elevating the priority of the climate crisis to the forefront of the international conversation,” Pelosi said Saturday in a statement.
“Taking action to protect our planet is a public health decision for clean air and clean water for our children, an economic decision for creating the green, good-paying jobs of the future, a national security decision to address resource competition and climate migration and also a moral decision to be good stewards of God’s creation and pass a sustainable, healthy planet to the next generation,” Pelosi said in a statement.