Sheila Jackson Lee: “I thank the distinguished gentleman for yielding. You know what? We hoped, coming from an energy State, that we could do…”

“I thank the distinguished gentleman for yielding. You know what? We hoped, coming from an energy State, that we could do this bipartisan. H.R. 1 goes off on a tangent that even union members are questioning. If you want to know what the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers would like, they would like us to be bipartisan and to get a framework to strengthen and to get reliable Federal permitting so that we can continue to have jobs. Even those who believe in parks, like I do, would like a permitting process that works and protects our parks. But if we look at this, what we will be doing is just giving people a blank slip, and they can do whatever they want to do in America's precious parks. That is not where we want to be. I am grateful for the idea that we want to build our economy, but we cannot build our economy on environmental disasters which are happening around the Nation: the 2008 coal ash spill in Tennessee, the 2014 water crisis in Flint, the concealed 2022 radioactive spill in Minnesota, the tragedy with the tornado in Mississippi, and the train chemical spill and fire in Ohio. It is clear that we need to do something together, but this is not it. H.R. 1 will, in fact, impact our environment by taking away the requirements for waste produced by certain energy facilities. It will undermine the Toxic Substances Control Act by short-circuiting the review and approval process for new chemicals.…”