Political Quotes

“Mr. Speaker, I rise in strong support of my bipartisan bill titled the Setting Consumer Standards for Lithium-Ion Batteries Act. Mr. Speaker, I am deeply grateful to Chair Guthrie, Ranking Member Pallone, Chair Bilirakis, and all the members of the Energy and Commerce Committee for their support. I am equally grateful to my partners in this effort, Congress Members Yvette Clarke, Andrew Garbarino, and Nick Langworthy. At the heart of our legislative progress has been the tireless advocacy of the FDNY, the finest and bravest fire department in the Nation. The sheer speed and scale of destruction caused by a lithium-ion battery fire is nothing short of staggering. In the Bronx, we witnessed one of our few neighborhood supermarkets, 2096 Grand Concourse, instantaneously reduced to rubble by a five-alarm fire caused by a malfunctioning lithium-ion battery. These fires are happening with greater frequency and ferocity across America. Nowhere has this crisis been more acute than in New York City, which has emerged as the epicenter of lithium-ion battery fires, with more than a thousand incidents since 2019. The number of fires has been rising relentlessly, from 30 in 2019 to 44 in 2020, 104 in 2021, 219 in 2022, 268 in 2023, and 279 in 2024. In just 4 years, America's largest city has seen an over 800 percent surge in these fires, creating an unprecedented crisis in public safety.…”