Investments to Build Back Better

Floor Speech

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Ms. BARRAGAN. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentlewoman for yielding. I join my colleagues today in calling for Congress to pass President Biden's entire Build Back Better agenda. This is a plan that takes on the climate crisis and fights for environmental justice at a time when we have seen record heat waves, wildfires, and drought in California and across the country. It invests in things like the climate smart ports to invest in zero emissions technology that will reduce toxic air pollution in neighborhoods near our ports, like the communities of color that surround the Port of Los Angeles in my Congressional District.

The Build Back Better agenda we know will also invest in things like the construction of more than 2 million affordable homes to address the rising housing costs that have hit Los Angeles so hard and across the country, with more than 41,000 suffering from homelessness.

It is going to do things like lowering health insurance cost; invest in higher education to lower tuition for students at minority-serving institutions. It is going to cut taxes for families with children by extending the child tax credit and cutting poverty. How do we not invest in that? But today I want to focus more on climate because this is a crisis, and this is a threat that is happening as we speak. It is urgent.

It is urgent that we act boldly to respond to the threat of climate change and the climate investments in the Build Back Better Act which are critical to maintain, not cut. For example, there are two investments in the bill I have led on that are important for climate and environmental justice, climate smart ports. This includes a critical $3.5 billion investment to reduce air pollution at ports by providing grants and rebates for the purchase and installation of zero emissions technology.

Nearly 40 percent of Americans live within 3 miles of a port and will benefit from these investments in clean air. In my district, the Port of Los Angeles is a major economic engine but it is also a major source of pollution. We have some of the worst air quality in the country and it disproportionately impacts communities of color in South Los Angeles. For decades, my constituents have advocated for zero emission solutions. This $3.5 billion ports investment in the Build Back Better Act will deliver. It is a long-overdue investment in environmental justice, in climate action, in jobs.

So I want to urge us to fight to keep these long-overdue investments in clean air for our port communities. Environmental justice and climate justice grants, that is also in the Build Back Better agenda. There is a $5 billion investment in environmental and climate justice grants, by far the largest-ever amount that we have invested in this.

Now, with this investment, we will empower environmental justice communities to lead projects that reduce pollution and bring climate justice solutions to communities hit first and worst by the climate crisis. This will mean climate-resilient solutions such as clean energy microgrids to keep the power on during extreme weather events like heat waves and hurricanes.

It means the community solar projects that create local jobs and save money on electricity bills, like the recent solar project in my district at the Wilmington Senior Center. It means green infrastructure to prevent flooding and to protect communities from extreme heat. These long overdue investments will give environmental justice communities the resources to fight for a safe climate and clean environment.

Of course, there are other investments, such as in-home care that will help provide care for our older Americans and those with disabilities so they could stay in their homes and get the care that they need. It will provide for things like paid family and medical leave. Imagine you are a nurse at a hospital and you help deliver babies and all of a sudden you get cancer and you have no paid leave.

How are you to go home and fight cancer, so that you can focus on that cancer fight instead of worrying about how you are going to pay the bills. That very thing happened to my sister just last November. She delivers babies at a military hospital, a Federal worker. You would think these are people we take care of, but this is happening across the country day in and day out. People have to go ask their colleagues and their coworkers to donate their leave and their time, and that is wrong.

We need to invest in these and we have to fight to keep these priorities in the Build Back Better agenda. And it is time that these investments should be paid for by ensuring the wealthy and the corporations finally pay their fair share of taxes. Now is the time to make these once-in-a-generation investments in problems that have long been neglected. Now is the time to stand strong and deliver the promises we made to the American people.

Let's stand up for the people and the planet. Let's meet the moment and pass the entire Build Back Better agenda.

I want to thank the gentlewoman for leading this effort and thank the Progressive Caucus for being at the forefront of making sure that we are fighting for the people.

Ms. LEGER FERNANDEZ. Mr. Speaker, I thank the Representative for her courage. She has raised the issues of environmental injustice since the day I met her. I know she raised them and she leads them in the Congressional Hispanic Caucus, and she has now described what it means on the ground, what it means in terms of jobs, but also what it means in terms of the life that you live, the air that you breathe. Because we know that in our communities, our communities of color suffer from higher rates of asthma. And when something like COVID comes about that ravages the lungs when they have already been damaged, it hurts. And that is why we saw the level of death and despair in the communities of color, in the Native American communities and the Latino communities.

I would also point out that climate change is costly. When they don't want to spend $3.7 trillion, or $2.5 trillion, let's remember that failure to address climate change will lead to world instability. It is estimated that we would lose $23 trillion, a $23 trillion impact on our economy, our world economy by failing to address this.

I don't want to pass over the impact in terms of the creating jobs for the people in our community, for the people in America. We know that we are now coming back. The pandemic is hard. We are still pushing out of it. Today we heard some great jobs numbers. 290,000 is below what they had projected so we are feeling good. We know that the pandemic is something that we are working on, that this President has done such a great job working with Congress on that.

But still, it is estimated that the Build Back Better agenda would create 4 million jobs. That is 1.1 million caregiving jobs. That is not just a number. That is somebody that you are going to take your baby to. And you know that what we are going to do is make sure that that caregiver has the kind of training that she needs or he needs to provide the best quality care; that because we are providing assistance, that their caregiver is going to be receiving the kind of pay that she or he deserves because they are providing the most valuable thing to you. They are caring for the most precious resource, our children. And that is what Build Back Better will do.

It will also create 556,000 manufacturing jobs, and those are going to be jobs with prevailing wages, good-paying jobs. That is what we need. When we talk about needing to bring manufacturing back, let's grow it here. And if you are for manufacturing in America, you have got to be for the Build Back Better Act, because that is going to create a half billion jobs. That is a lot of jobs.

But what does that job mean? It means that there is somebody who is going to go to work, who has a family, or wants to start a family, and is going to be able to buy a home. But we know that buying a home is hard. So the Build Back Better Act is going to provide assistance for those first-time home buyers. Because we know that the hardest thing for buying a home is having that down payment, and we have down payment assistance in the Build Back Better Act. That is what we are going to be bringing.

We have looked at what are the different levers of our economy that make a difference that are infrastructure, that help a community thrive, not just survive. That is what is in the Build Back Better Act, because we want our communities to thrive, not just survive.

Construction jobs, 312,000 construction jobs, doing the things that we need in America, building those bridges, building those health clinics, building those schools and those businesses. Because it takes all of that; it takes an investment in us.

And we do pay for it. There is not a dime--this is not about debt, because it is all paid for and it is paid for first by going after those who fail to pay their taxes, even when due. So, tax cheats, yes, we are going to make you pay your taxes, because that is only fair. We are going to make those corporations who have paid less in taxes than my child's schoolteacher, we are going to make them pay their fair share.

Not a single family that is earning less than $450,000 a year--so if you are earning half a million dollars a year, then you will see a small increase in your taxes.

But if any of you are outside listening to this and saying, what will it do to my tax burden? If you are earning less than a half a million dollars a year, you are going to be just fine. In fact, you are going to have a tax refund, because we have the child tax credit in there. We are lowering taxes for working families and middle-class families.

We know that when we invest in creating jobs that pay fair wages, that include benefits like healthcare, paid family and medical leave, and retirement, we will help more people get those jobs and keep those jobs. Because when they are able to go home and help somebody they love who is ill in their family, then they don't have to leave that job. That is what we should be caring about.

So when is the time to get this done? As I say in my Nuevo Mexico, ahora es cuando; it is time now to get this done. Because that is right, that is good for our communities, it is good for America, it is good for our women, and it is good for our planet.

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