Department of the Interior, Environment, and Related Agencies Appropriations Act, 2024
Floor Speech
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Mr. ROY. Mr. Chairman, the amendment that I am offering here on the legislation we are considering would prohibit any of the funds in this appropriations bill from being used to carry out so-called environmental justice activities.
This so-called environmental justice is nothing more, in the end, than a synthesis of divisive racial ideology and policies that my colleagues on the other side of the aisle like to promote with radical environmentalism.
Basically, they are taking the radical environmental policies perpetuated in the EPA and Interior through this administration, doubling down on them, injecting divisive race policies, and now creating a larger problem for the American people.
The entire ideology is based on the notion that Federal environmental funding should be allocated based on immutable characteristics. Let's think about that for a minute. Not only do we need to destroy the American economy with radical environmental policies, but we need to inject divisive race policies in the middle of it. That is where we are.
People are running around, going to the gas station to get gasoline. They are trying to power their homes. They are wondering why we are having massive instability around the world. They wonder why China is on the rise. They wonder why Iran is able to enrich itself by selling oil to China. They wonder why they can't afford to live their own lives while inflation is destroying their well-being. Now, we are injecting race into the middle of it all.
Biden's so-called Justice40 Initiative directs 40 percent of Federal clean energy and energy efficiency spending based on ethnicity, migrant status, and income status. You literally just can't make up this absurdity.
Here are some of the examples.
``Developing a roadmap to dismantle environmental racism'' in Brunswick, Georgia.
Ecology Action in Bloomington, Illinois, ``seeks to identify and develop mitigation strategies for disproportionate climate impacts . . . and increase tree equity.'' What in the hell is tree equity?
Supporting summer high school environmental internships in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, ``to build climate resilience and connect mainly young people of color to life skills and environmental sector career pathways.'' However, a recent study conducted by President Obama's former Energy Secretary found, on average, solar workers make $12,000 a year less than oil and gas workers.
The fact of the matter is that we are destroying the American economy by chasing the climate agenda, which my colleagues on the other side of the aisle fully acknowledge and admit is being driven by the climate agenda and that the American people must suffer higher inflation and higher costs--an inability to afford their own homes and their own cars to go about their own jobs and their own way of life--in order to pursue an agenda that everybody acknowledges that, even if we do everything my colleagues on the other side of the aisle say we should do, wouldn't dent CO
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Mr. ROY. Mr. Chairman, the fact is, I have not heard one constituent--not one constituent among the 750,000 people who I represent--come up to me and say: Do you know what I need, Congressman Roy? I need environmental justice funding.
Calls to my office are just begging for environmental justice funding. Has anybody had a constituent do that, call up and say: Will you please solve the world's problems with environmental justice funding? No.
Do you know what I have had? I have had phone calls to my office saying: I can't afford gas. I can't afford electricity.
I have had calls from workers from a refinery in my district saying that they are going to drive us out of business and that they don't know what they are going to do.
That is all a direct result of a radical agenda by Democrats in the White House, the administration, and my colleagues across the aisle in this Chamber and the other Chamber who are more interested in advancing a radical agenda than standing up for American citizens who simply want to live their lives.
Mr. Chairman, this amendment is a straightforward amendment. It would do what the American people want us to do, which is focus on our job here in this Chamber to deliver our constitutional duties and nothing more and not divide us by race while also destroying the American economy with radical environmentalism.
Mr. Chair, I yield back the balance of my time.
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Mr. ROY. Mr. Chair, before I talk about this amendment, the gentlewoman referred to the importance of having trees. No one disagrees with that. Yes, I live in the Texas Hill Country, where live oaks are something we try to figure out how to protect, especially, for example, when you have an ice storm like earlier this year. You are out there figuring out a way to go save your trees by cutting limbs and figuring out how to preserve the beauty that God gave us. Nobody disagrees with that.
Nonetheless, the idea that a core responsibility of the Federal Government is tree equity is absurd. The State of Texas is the eighth largest economy in the world. We are perfectly capable of figuring out how to deal with trees.
We don't have any money. We are $34 trillion in debt, $2 trillion a year in deficit spending, and we are talking about tree equity?
What the hell are we doing? That is the question here.
I love trees. I love live oak trees. I do everything I can to preserve and protect the environment in which I live because--this is a crazy idea--I live there. I actually like to fish, and I like to live in clean air and clean water. I like to have an environment that is great to be in for my kids and my family.
We had a Clean Water Act and a Clean Air Act in Texas before the Environmental Protection Agency was even created here in this town.
The fact of the matter is we can do what we need to do to protect our communities without this place spending money we don't have to interfere with this. Yes, there are interstate issues we must deal with, and we can deal with those things. Nevertheless, the fact is we can do these things.
This amendment that I am offering prohibits any of the funding in the Interior-Environment appropriations bill from being used to carry out President Biden's executive orders on climate change.
These executive orders direct the EPA to wage its regulatory war on the United States energy production and the internal combustion engine. The fact of the matter is there are ambitious efforts to convert our entire fleet of vehicles to have two-thirds of new vehicles be electric vehicles by 2032.
Now, that might sound good in a little focus group in some Ivy League cabal in Boston, but the idea of what this is going to actually do to hardworking Americans is something we ought to actually flush out for the American public when the average EV is $16,000 more than a vehicle with an internal combustion engine.
Maybe we should talk about the racial justice issues of cobalt miners around the world who are being exploited in the Congo so that we can empower China by buying all of their batteries rather than producing American oil and gas.
If people think that all of this stuff is an accident of what we are seeing unfold in the Middle East and what we are seeing unfold in Ukraine while our prices are going up and while our national security strength is going down because we are pursuing this radical agenda, these things are all connected.
So, yes, we should not be funding these radical executive orders that are destroying the American way of life and making it virtually impossible for people to figure out how to live their lives while we pursue unicorn energy theories that we are going to be able to somehow magically produce power without the use of reliable power.
Texas has tons of wind and solar. That is great, but we also have a grid that is decreasingly reliable directly as a consequence of Federal regulatory impact on our ability to manage our grid. That is wrong, we shouldn't do it, and we shouldn't be funding a continuation of it.
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Mr. ROY. Mr. Chair, the fact of the matter is that, yes, this bill returns the funding to the ever-efficient model of effectiveness of the 2018 Federal Government.
Yes, it does back up the funding levels. Frankly, we ought to be doing it for more of our agencies, and we are trying to take those steps forward. I will say that unapologetically because the American people are sick and tired of the Federal Government spending money we don't have to fund agencies that are directly at war with their way of life. That is the truth.
That is why gasoline is $1 more than it was when Biden took office, despite the fact that the President has completely dumped our Strategic Petroleum Reserve in order to try to preserve political benefits for my colleagues on the other side of the aisle. That is just the simple truth, and everybody knows it.
Yet, we run around here ignoring the reality of what that means for the American people who are trying to get by every single day while the Federal Government is directly at odds with their ability to prosper, earn a living, pay their bills, pay for their energy, pay for their schools, buy cars, and do what they need to do.
Mr. Chair, I yield back the balance of my time.
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