Providing for Congressional Disapproval of the Rule Submitted By the Environmental Protection Agency Relating to ``Control of Air Pollution From New Motor Vehicles: Heavy-Duty Engine and Vehicle Standards''

Floor Speech

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Ms. TLAIB. Mr. Speaker, I thank Ranking Member Pallone for his incredibly important leadership on this issue.

Mr. Speaker, every American, every single child and every single family, has the right to breathe clean air.

I rise in opposition to S.J. Res. 11, the latest effort from colleagues to put American lives in danger to boost the profits of their corporate, polluter donors.

Heavy-duty vehicles make up just about 6 percent of trucks on the road but generate 59 percent of all nitrogen oxide pollution in our country.

Mr. Speaker, I grew up in southwest Detroit thinking those heavy trucks rumbling through our neighborhood, near my school, near where I lived, near the park I played in, was normal. It isn't normal.

In my district and surrounding areas, we see heavy trucks go through our neighborhoods up to 20 more times a day than any other community in Michigan. This is not the kind of life for any family or any resident of our country. It is no surprise that the rates of asthma, lung cancer, and COPD are dramatically higher in my region, in my district, than any other parts of the State.

We see heavy-duty trucks drive outside of our elementary schools, local health centers, and nursing homes every single day. We see premature deaths, heart attacks, asthma, strokes, and maternal complications. These are just some of the effects from pollution that these vehicles spew into our neighborhoods.

Mr. Speaker, we have a right to breathe clean air.

Part 1 of President Biden's Clean Trucks Plan is just a small step toward environmental justice for communities that have been left behind for far too long. Our communities, Mr. Speaker, cannot afford a setback like this that is being proposed today. They cannot afford to continue to have their health, safety, and futures put at risk for corporate profits. They don't have another day, another year, another month to live like this.

President Biden will rightfully veto this ridiculous attempt to make our communities even more unhealthy and more dangerous, but I call on the EPA to go even further to make progress in cleaning up our air and water in order to give our residents a real opportunity for a better quality of life.

I invite any of my colleagues to spend a day with me in my district to see for themselves what rampant, unchecked pollution does to a community, to a neighborhood. Talk to any of my seniors who grew up with it, who are literally on breathing machines before they go to bed. This is not the life we want for any American.

I invite you to meet the children born prematurely to parents with asthma and COPD who go to work every day with headaches and chronic respiratory problems. Maybe then you would understand not only the need for this rule to remain intact but to go even further to protect the health of those we are sent here to represent.

Mr. Speaker, I urge my colleagues to vote against the CRA.

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