Do you think that this hurts the ability of the local neighbors to actually move forward in supporting their communities, when they see that the Government just doesn't even care?

It is called 'Protection from Cumulative Emissions and Underenforcement of Environmental Law Act.' And that is my bill.

These neighborhoods are classic environmental justice communities. They suffer from highways going right through the middle, from railways, refineries, other historical polluters.

It will leave a stain on who we are as Americans since we would be exchanging the religious freedoms of tribal people for a promise of jobs and profit offered by a foreign mining interest.

The magnitude of the damages was foreseeable and preventable.

The key lesson from what happened in Texas is that extreme weather events are devastating and happening more frequently.

We need to accept this fact and prepare. We need to stop kicking the can down the road.

I hope that this--that this hearing will help bring some light and bring some changes to Texas.

What do cities need to do to--and communities need to do--to sort of harden their preparation for these coming storms?

I also want to thank the leadership of two of our colleagues, Representatives Fletcher and Veasey, who have been tireless advocates for their constituents in this time of crisis.

Last month an extreme weather event in Texas triggered a crisis of an enormous scale and took a staggering toll on the State.

I'm hoping, as we develop an infrastructure bill, we can start to think about how we can harden the grid because we know the weather is getting more extreme.

And I want to thank Rep. Veasey, Rep. Fletcher for working with me to implement a number of the recommendations from our Climate Crisis Action Plan.

Climate change is here, and we need to recognize this reality by taking action to ensure our electric grids are designed with the resiliency and reliability needed in a climate-changed world.

We have to learn exactly what happened, why it happened, and what we need to do to make sure it doesn't happen again in Texas or anywhere else.

We have to. We have to for Tom`s son, for those ten people who perished yesterday. We have to keep it up.

Any claim that this systemwide failure was caused primarily by the use of renewables is blatantly false.

And I want to thank Representative Rice and others who have pointed out how Texas has dropped the ball.

The Texas grid must be designed with a full appreciation that climate change is real.

Adapting and confronting to a changing climate will not come cheap, and it will not come easily.

the market just is shifting away from coal.

We need to figure out something to do, which is why we are discussing this bill today.

I just think that is unfair, and it is, in my opinion, beneath the office that you hold.

The Biden administration has taken decisive action to get the COVID-19 vaccination effort back on track.

We are now on track to have enough vaccine supply for all American adults by the end of May, 2 months earlier than prior projections.