'Castro's playbook': Ex-AG warns dozens of congressional bills are pushing socialist ideas

Federal guarantees for jobs and housing, the elimination of private health insurance, a massive Green New Deal expansion, and new taxes on unrealized wealth are among dozens of current congressional proposals being called out by a national free-market group led by former Virginia Attorney General Jason Miyares.

Miyares, whose family fled Fidel Castro's communist regime, described the proposed laws seen on Capitol Hill as "straight from Castro’s playbook" in a sit-down interview with Fox News Digital. Miyares recently became the honorary chairman at the American Free Enterprise Chamber of Commerce, a conservative trade organization representing American businesses, which just launched a "Socialism Watch" initiative tracking 32 bills that have been introduced on Capitol Hill aiming to implement what the group describes as socialist policy goals across healthcare, energy, labor, housing, taxation and more.

"The year Fidel Castro took power in Cuba, Cuba had the same GDP as Greece. The year that he died, too bad the same GDP as Sudan," Miyares told Fox News Digital. "Socialism doesn't work. It impoverishes every country that embraces it."

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Among the bills highlighted by Miyares and the American Free Enterprise Chamber of Commerce is legislation that would ban fracking nationwide beginning in 2029, prohibit greenhouse-gas emissions from power plants and restrict new liquefied natural gas infrastructure and most U.S. oil and natural gas exports. 

Others would create government-backed job-guarantee programs offering employment to qualifying applicants, replace private health insurance with a national Medicare for All program and impose annual taxes on accumulated wealth, even when those gains have not been realized through a sale.

The group is also zeroing in on a massive progressive push to overhaul American real estate: the "Housing is a Human Right Act." While supporters pitch the $300 billion bill as a moral crusade to end homelessness, critics like Miyares see it differently. They argue that by officially declaring shelter a government-guaranteed right and pumping billions into "social housing," the legislation is actively trying to push private landlords out of the market.

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Other measures flagged by the group include a proposal to create a quasi-governmental "National Infrastructure Bank" to fund politically favored state projects, alongside a $1.6 trillion "Green New Deal for Public Schools" that the American Free Enterprise Chamber of Commerce warns would hand local school district operations over to the federal government.

"These young people are embracing socialism thinking that it leads to helping those that are poor, disadvantaged. The reality is it does the opposite," Miyares told Fox News Digital. "It actually hurts the very people that it wants to help."

Miyares' warnings about socialism are rooted in his family's history in Cuba. His mother, Miriam, fled Fidel Castro's communist regime in 1965 at 19 years old, arriving in the United States after leaving nearly everything behind. Miyares has said his uncle, an opponent of Castro, was arrested following the Bay of Pigs invasion and subjected to a mock execution, an experience he has said helped drive his mother's decision to leave the island.

"So many young people have forgotten really, really painful lessons of history that you cannot judge a bill or an economic system based on intentions, you have to judge it on results," Miyares said. "What we've seen time and time again is socialism fails everywhere it's been tried."

But Miyares argued the debate is no longer confined to activists or ideological arguments outside Washington, pointing to the 32 bills tracked through the American Free Enterprise Chamber’s newly launched "Socialism Watch" initiative as evidence that policies associated with the socialist-left have made their way into actual legislation before Congress.

"AOC joked that woke one was crazy," Miyares said. "Well, it’s clear that woke two should belong in an insane asylum because it’s a full-blown embrace of Marxism and socialism."