Department of the Interior, Environment, and Related Agencies Appropriations Act, 2018

Floor Speech

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Mr. Chairman, all Americans deserve access to clean air. We have a great deal of progress that we have made in making the air cleaner and reducing pollution, but we should continue to learn from the most recent science to continue to improve air quality. Instead, this bill delays needed public health protections like the ozone standard.

My amendment would strike language that delays the implementation of the new ozone standards until the year 2026. We don't have until 2026 to protect our children's lungs. We don't have until that time to protect our seniors who are most subject and vulnerable to respiratory harm.

The consequences of this pollution are real and significant, especially for ozone pollutants. Chronic exposure to ozone at the ground level is dangerous. It increases the risk of hospital admissions. In my district in Minnesota, we have a real epidemic of respiratory injuries known as asthma. North Minneapolis is mostly a
low-income community of color and has the highest rates of poverty, unemployment, and asthma.

Our children deserve better. Allowing the implementation of these ozone standards will protect them.

I just want to say, Mr. Chairman, much is said on this House floor about job-killing regulations. As a person who believes in the right of a business to open up and make a profit, I also believe that business must absorb the cost that they impose on society as well.

This rule says you can take all the money you can possibly make as you expand and increase ground level ozone, but you don't ever have to pay the costs of the externalities and the health costs you impose on everybody else.

Mr. Chairman, I reserve the balance of my time.

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Mr. Chairman, I would just like to share with everybody that over the past several weeks, Americans have seen this body try to strip healthcare away from them. If there was a full repeal with no replace, 32 million people would have been without any healthcare that they had before, and many more would have been unprotected from preexisting conditions. That, fortunately, was held off. But now here we are again today with more attacks and assaults on people's health.

When will the Congress take people's health seriously? When will we hold businesses accountable who emit toxins that cause the ozone layer at the ground to increase and cause respiratory illnesses?

It is time for Congress to act responsibly in the public interest to make sure that the health of all Americans is protected. The people have the right to breathe. Let's go forward and eliminate and strip out this language that delays the implementation of the new zone standards until many years from now. Let's do it now.

Mr. Chairman, I yield back the balance of my time.

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