Tim Ryan: “in the city of Akron, which I represent a part of, their obligation for the EPA is $400 million in the city of Akron.…”

“in the city of Akron, which I represent a part of, their obligation for the EPA is $400 million in the city of Akron. Our friends on the other side are saying that there is no role for the Federal Government to play. You have communities like Akron, you have communities like Youngstown that have lost significant industry over the past 20 or 30 years; and if we want to bring industry back, if we want to grow industry, we can't have brownfields all over our cities. This is an investment. This is going to clean the site up. This is an opportunity for us to redevelop sites in our communities. Now, 30 years ago when the steel mills were pumping, when the rubber industry was pumping, a lot of our tax dollars were going to many of your communities to help lay down roads, build the interstate, rail lines, water infrastructure, all of these things. What this bill does is it tries to reinvest back into some of these communities. We want to be self-sufficient, but we don't have the local tax base. There is a role here for the Federal Government. Mr. Chairman, I ask my friends, why would you want to prevent us from cleaning up brownfield sites in the old industrial areas? We don't need it forever. We just need to clean them up, and then we will have a tax base there and have more taxpayers to pay taxes and keep the tax rates low for everybody, because we will have more.”