U.S. Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, said Wednesday the Green New Deal could cost Texans an average of $65,000 a year.

Speaking on a conference call with Texas reporters, Cornyn said the early estimated pricetag of $93 trillion for the Green New Deal came from the American Action Forum and the $65,000 is derived from that top-line number.

“It’s hard to project that far into the future,” he said. “The bottom line is it is unaffordable and will bankrupt our state and the country, in my view.”

Cornyn said the Green New Deal is part of a list of far-left ideas, along with reparations for slavery.

“Our Democratic friends have gotten captured by an increasingly radical base,” he said. “They have recommended everything from the Green New Deal to Medicare for all to reparations for slavery, to packing the Supreme Court of the United States with more justices and just showed themselves to be unworthy of governing.”

Cornyn said he did not believe reparations for slavery were appropriate due to the amount of time between the end of slavery in 1865 and now.

“My view is the original mistake in America was to accept the evil of slavery, but it’s part of our history,” he said. “No one living today had anything to say or to do about that. I think it’s unfair to take money from their pocket and give it to somebody else based on something that happened 150 or more years ago.”

Cornyn said he believes the discussion of reparations comes up in Democratic primaries to generate support from African Americans.

While the senator cited the distance between slavery and today as the primary reason to oppose reparations, Cornyn also opposed reparations for issues such as housing discrimination and redlining, which took place as recently as 50 years ago.

“I still think, on principle, the thing that counts the most is what we are doing today to remedy discrimination and make sure the promise of equality is available to everybody,” he said.

The senator also said he realizes the difficulty of navigating the political waters in a 2020 with the polarizing president at the top of the ticket.

“Just like in 2018, (President Donald Trump) will be responsible for close to 100 percent of the turnout,” Cornyn said. “Half of the people voting will be voting because they support his policies and the other half will be voting against him because they don’t support his policies.

“As you can imagine, that does make navigating those waters challenging. Texas is changing, too, with people moving to Texas from other parts of the country.”

Cornyn said he wants to make more of the country like Texas instead of the other way around.

“We are the model that the country should be following as far as taxes and regulation,” he said. “If Texas goes blue, we won’t have another Republican president in my lifetime.”