Dems sum up GOP’s climate change plan with a ¯_(ツ)_/¯

Senate Democrats slammed Republicans on climate change Wednesday, summing up the party’s plan to combat the environmental challenge with a ¯_(ツ)_/¯.

{mosads}Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.) spoke from the Senate floor with a sign that read “#WhatsTheGOPsClimatePlan ¯_(ツ)_/¯”

Sen. Ed Markey also spoke from the Senate floor with a sign that included a sad-faced shruggie. The Massachusetts Democrat suggested that Republicans didn’t have a plan to combat climate change, adding that “shruggie says ‘I’m not happy. I’m sad.’ “

It’s not the first time Democrats have used the internet emoticon to help them sum up their critiques of Republican policies. Earlier this year, Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) used the symbol during a speech suggesting that Republicans didn’t have a plan if the Supreme Court struck down subsidies under the Affordable Care Act.

Murphy’s speech might have been the first time the symbol, which gained popularity online after Kanye West interrupted Taylor Swift’s MTV awards show acceptance speech, was used on the Senate floor.

Whitehouse and Markey spoke on the Senate floor Wednesday, along with Minority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) and Sens. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) and Brian Schatz (D-Hawaii), to pressure their Republican colleagues to turn over a plan to combat climate change.

Whitehouse, a vocal critic of Republicans on the issue, tied their opposition to the Koch brothers.

“There is a thread that links all of this and it is money. The Koch brothers are putting hundreds of millions of dollars into this election,” he said, referring to GOP donors Charles and David Koch. “One of their organizations, one, said it was going to spend $889 million in this election and that anybody who crossed them on climate change would be at, and I quote, ‘a severe disadvantage.’ Nice little campaign you got here.”

Reid added that Republicans have a “Koch challenge.”

“The closest they came was trying to be funny on the floor when it snowed and brought a snowball into the Senate chamber, said couldn’t be climate change, we got some snow today,” the Democratic leader said, referring to Sen. James Inhofe (R-Okla.), who threw a snowball on the Senate floor earlier this year.