Frank Pallone

I think the HEROES Act is really important in this regard.

In my home state of New Jersey, Black residents account for nearly 20 percent of all coronavirus deaths.

These long-term trends are rooted in several social determinants that are often driven by structural discrimination.

We have long known that people of color experience disparities in healthcare in the United States.

The tragic result of these long-term trends is that people of color are more likely to suffer from underlying health conditions, and have a much harder time gaining access to care.

While we have made progress to close these gaps in recent years, including with the passage of the Affordable Care Act, people of color in America continue to experience disparities in care and worse health outcomes compared to White…

Today's hearing comes at a time of reckoning for racial justice in America.

Thank you, Chairwoman Eshoo, for convening this really important hearing that confronts the alarming racial and ethnic disparities in the COVID-19 pandemic as well as the inequities within our larger healthcare system.

I encourage this committee to continue working for its helping municipally-owned utilities and the people struggling to pay their bills.

It is long past time for the energy sector to increase diversity in the workforce.

The response of the coronavirus has highlighted significant racial disparities across our country.

The lack of certainty regarding renewable energy tax credits has hurt the industry.

Congress has to invest in clean energy infrastructure.

Climate change is an existential crisis.

We have to concentrate on what we can do legislatively because we are legislators.

I wanted to say, Mr. Ali, when you talked about--you did that biblical reference to the oceans and rivers associated with justice and fairness, that was so wonderful, from Amos, I think.

We simply cannot allow this to continue, and unfortunately, the Trump administration is only making this public health and environmental crisis worse.

When the Trump administration rolls back protections under the Clean Air Act, it hurts these communities most.

We simply can't allow this to continue.

It is alarming to see the devastatingly high rates of infection and death for communities of color, low-income communities, Native American communities, and fence-line communities.

If we don't have a national czar and we don't have these national policies in place with specific benchmarks and transparency, we're going to have the same problem with vaccines.

We require a national chain of command, and we have all kinds of transparency along the lines of what you said to make sure that you know exactly what the goals are.

We have tried in the CARES Act, in the bill that followed, the interim bill, and now in the HEROES Act, to really be more prescriptive to try to have some kind of uniform national policy.

I think that Democrats on the Energy and Commerce Committee... really do not trust the President to implement any kind of national strategy.

It is clear that we must collectively find solutions to stop the spread of this devastating virus.