McCollum No Vote on H.R. 4821
Mr. Speaker, I rise in strong opposition to H.R. 4821, Interior, Environment, and Related Agencies Appropriations Act, 2024. The overall 35 percent reduction to the top line of this bill is simply irresponsible. With this bill, House Republicans are endangering public health, damaging our public lands and natural resources, and are failing to address the existential threat of climate change.
Communities in Minnesota and across our nation need reliable access to safe drinking water and clean air. The Environmental Protection Agency is tasked with safeguarding the air we breathe and the water we drink, cleaning up harmful pollution, and responding to public health emergencies like the train derailment last February in East Palestine, Ohio, where the EPA is still overseeing the cleanup of toxic contamination today. This bill includes a crippling 39 percent cut to the EPA that will jeopardize our public health. H.R. 4821 eliminates funding for environmental justice grant programs. These programs are designed to ensure disadvantaged communities that have historically suffered from underinvestment have access to clean air and water and climate resilience solutions. Just this October, the EPA issued $3 million in environmental justice grants across the state of Minnesota to address environmental or public health issues and build a healthier future for all Minnesotans. These grants must be protected.
Our public lands and natural resources must be protected not only for today, but for future generations. H.R. 4821 threatens our public lands and critical watersheds throughout the nation, and specifically harms conservation efforts in Minnesota with harmful policy riders that would overturn two final decisions by the Forest Service and Bureau of Land Management to protect the watershed that flows through the 1.1-million-acre Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness. This wilderness protects a priceless reserve of water so clean that you can drink directly from the lakes. We should not be using a funding bill to ignore settled scientific record and overturn final decisions on mineral leases and mining withdrawals.
As Ranking Member on the Defense Appropriations Subcommittee, I am intimately aware that the Department of Defense considers climate change to be a top national security issue. Why are House Republicans harming our country’s ability to respond to this threat? The drastic cuts made in this bill will put us at a severe global disadvantage in responding to climate change and helping communities who are directly affected by it.
Mr. Speaker, instead of reevaluating their extreme 2024 funding bills and working to find a bipartisan path forward to fund the government beyond November 17th, House Republicans are moving forward with passing bills that have no chance of ever becoming law. With this bill, House Republicans are debilitating essential government agencies, jeopardizing our public lands and natural resources, and abandoning investments made by Democrats last Congress to address the threat of climate change. For all of these reasons, I must vote against H.R. 4821, and I urge my colleagues to do the same.
Thank you, and I yield back.