Paul Tonko: “I thank the gentleman from New Jersey for yielding. Madam Speaker, I begin by thanking Chairs Pallone, Johnson, and…”

“I thank the gentleman from New Jersey for yielding. Madam Speaker, I begin by thanking Chairs Pallone, Johnson, and Grijalva for all of their hard work on this package. I have no delusions that this bill will solve climate change, but it can play a meaningful role in deploying clean energy and energy efficiency while supporting improvements and cost reductions in technologies that we are going to need to achieve our decarbonization goals. This package does not have everything in it that I would have wanted. However, my threshold for support is not whether it is perfect. The questions are: Would it be a net positive? Would it hasten our transition to clean energy? Would it play a role, even a modest one, in reducing climate and traditional pollution? And would it create new American jobs? I think the answer to each of these questions is an obvious yes. This package is going to allow us to weatherize more low-income Americans' homes, build more EV charging infrastructure, and codify important environmental justice requirements, which have been ignored for the past 4 years. It includes bills I have authored to support the Department of Energy's Office of Wind, to streamline the permitting process for distributed energy resources, and to ensure that the research dollars we authorize are protected by strong, scientific integrity policies.…”