Lower Energy Costs Act
Floor Speech
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Mr. RUIZ. Mr. Chair, I rise today in strong opposition to H.R. 1, the polluters over people act.
As a doctor, I am all too familiar with the harmful consequences of pollution and other environmental dangers on people's health.
Frontline communities near high-polluting corporations already bear too much of the burden of environmental injustice.
For example, people living near fossil fuel drilling sites are at greater risk for pre-term birth, cancer, asthma, and other respiratory diseases.
We must do more to protect people's health, not silence the voices of these vulnerable communities like this bill aims to do, not speeding up permit approvals without local families' input on projects that will go in their backyards like this bill aims to do.
This bill will also make the air we breathe dirtier and the people sicker by sacrificing key environmental protections under the Clean Air Act, the Toxic Substances Control Act, and other laws, all to increase fossil fuel energy production in a reckless and irresponsible way.
This is the wrong approach. Instead, we should secure America's energy independence with clean, reliable energy that will lower costs for families and protect people's health.
This includes building out our domestic supply chain for critical minerals like lithium while producing renewable energy.
We can do this through projects like geothermal energy production and lithium recovery at the Salton Sea in Imperial County, California, in my district.
The innovative approach we are taking there is responsible energy production with a closed-loop clean system that also creates lithium extraction with geothermal energy.
This is better for the environment, better for our communities, and better for the economy. This shows that we do not have to sacrifice health and the environment.
Mr. Chair, I urge my colleagues to reject H.R. 1 and instead work toward solutions that bring everyone together to move our country forward.
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