East Palestine Train Derailment Disaster

Floor Speech

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Mr. JOYCE of Pennsylvania. Mr. Speaker, I rise today to address a crisis that President Biden refuses to acknowledge: the derailment of a train in East Palestine, Ohio, that has left a community traumatized and families afraid to drink the water that comes through their faucets.

Instead of compassion, these families received nothing but a cold shoulder from President Biden. Instead of certainty, these families received a rushed process to test the water that they drink and the air that they breathe.

What we need is a full accounting of events.

As a doctor, I urge the EPA to continue to repeat their tests and to provide an accurate assessment of the risks posed to our communities' air and drinking water.

An administration that fails to provide for the safety of its people is a failed administration. I stand here to urge President Biden to visit East Palestine and finally support those Americans who are hurting.

We need transparency, we need accountability, and we need to address this head-on; not with shrugs and handwringing, that is what we have seen so far from President Biden.

We need to see compassion, we need to see thoroughness, and we need to see diligence in addressing this problem. Origin of COVID 19

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Mr. JOYCE of Pennsylvania. Mr. Speaker, 3 years ago, as a new and dangerous virus caused by the Chinese Communist Party began to spread, they shut down internal travel but allowed international flights to continue.

The Chinese Communist Party was attempting to stop COVID-19 from spreading within its own borders while allowing it to come to the shores of America.

This weekend, the Department of Energy finally confirmed what we have all along suspected: that this leak did not come from a wet market and that it escaped from a lab in central China.

This virus and the related government policies led to vaccine mandates, lost jobs, supply chain problems, and the isolation of our Nation's young people.

It is time today to hold the Chinese Communist Party accountable. What we need now is to predict, prepare, and prevent another such disaster from occurring.

The American people want and deserve answers, and they deserve accountability for the hardships that this virus, unleashed by the Chinese Communist Party, has caused. Now we need to ensure that a crisis like this can never occur again.

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Source