Grace Napolitano: “I rise again in strong opposition to H.R. 897. To be clear, H.R. 897 was not created to respond to Zika. Now, I hear my…”

“I rise again in strong opposition to H.R. 897. To be clear, H.R. 897 was not created to respond to Zika. Now, I hear my colleague's information in regard to all that has happened with the EPA and all the budget items. I suggest that we start looking at increasing the budget for EPA so they can do a better job. Insofar as herbicides and pesticides, I have a lot of information from my own experience in California, where it has created a Superfund that has taken many years and will take many more to create. Up until 2 weeks ago, the so-called Reducing Regulatory Burdens Act was drafted to relax our laws protecting public health to reduce the paperwork burdens on commercial pesticide spraying operations. If you will notice, most of them were people in the spraying business, in the ag business, and it is to their advantage. What about the public interest? This will be the fourth time in 3 years that we will vote against the legislation. To be clear, a great number of waterbodies in the U.S. are already impaired or threatened by pesticides; yet for some reason, our Republican majority wants it to be easier for companies to add more of these pesticides to our waters, yet not report these additions nor monitor, for any reason, immediate health impacts that may result.…”