Republican candidate for U.S. Senate in Georgia, Herschel Walker, slammed a new law aimed at fighting climate change, arguing that too much of the money is “going into trees.”
“They continue to try to fool you like they’re helping you out, but they’re not,” Walker said at an event on Sunday, according to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. “They’re not helping you out, because a lot of the money is going into trees. You know that, don’t you? It’s going into trees. We’ve got enough trees. Don’t we have enough trees around here?”
President Joe Biden signed the Inflation Reduction Act into law last week. The new law includes a $369 billion investment in climate and energy policies. $1.5 billion of that will go toward the Urban and Community Forestry Assistance program “for tree planting and related activities,” according to the bill’s text.
But, the majority of the law’s climate spending involves providing funding for clean energy and electric vehicle tax breaks, domestic manufacturing of batteries and solar panels and offering financial incentives for consumers and businesses that take steps to boost energy efficiency and reduce greenhouse gas emissions, according to CNBC.
Walker doubled down in a tweet saying: “Yes, you heard me right…Joe Biden and @ReverendWarnock are spending $1.5 billion on ‘urban forestry’ and raising taxes on those making under $200k to pay for it. Yes, I have a problem with that.”
The law does not raise taxes on Americans earning less than $400,000 per year.
Will Kiley, a spokesperson for Walker’s campaign told NBC News in an email that Walker “was commenting on how Raphael Warnock and Joe Biden spent billions of taxpayer dollars, in a recession, to do absolutely nothing to combat inflation and provide relief to hard-working Georgians.”
