Department of the Interior, Environment, and Related Agencies Appropriations Act, 2025
Floor Speech
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Mr. PERRY. Mr. Chairman, this amendment prohibits the EPA from using funds for actions pursuant to section 115 of the Clean Air Act.
To be clear, section 115 of the Clean Air Act allows the EPA to mandate State emissions levels to whatever level the agency deems appropriate if they find U.S. emissions endanger a foreign nation and the endangered nation has a reciprocal agreement to prevent or control these emissions in their own nation, such as the Paris climate accord.
This backdoor provision allows the EPA to vastly expand its regulatory authority and encroach on the right of the States to regulate their own energy sectors based on the actions solely of a foreign nation.
It is irresponsible to allow unelected bureaucrats at the EPA to retain the ability to seize such expansive authority. If the U.S. Government wants to pursue such a policy, one that in my opinion is constitutionally suspect, it should be done through an explicit congressional delegation of authority on a case-by-case basis.
A similar amendment has passed the House during previous Interior and Environmental Appropriations packages. I urge adoption, and I reserve the balance of my time.
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Mr. PERRY. Mr. Chairman, I certainly agree that we need to work with other nations and our neighbors, everybody around the globe. We are living on the same planet, breathing the same air, drinking the same water, but the United States is a sovereign nation, and we don't bow to any other sovereign, let alone take their word for it or have them impose regulations on us as they deem fit, as they see fit.
That is what section 115 would allow. It allows a backdoor access to doing so through a reciprocal agreement, not even a treaty, such as the Paris climate accord. That is the issue here, an agreement that an administration may take, that not this body, not the body across the building, not the American people are signatories to. That is the purpose of this amendment.
As I said, Mr. Chairman, in the past, this amendment has been accepted on this very bill, this very same amendment, and so I would urge adoption once again this time.
Mr. Chairman, in closing, once again, this is just common sense. I don't know that back a long time ago when section 115 was written it was written with the idea that the Paris climate accord, not a treaty, but with the force of a treaty would occur, but in the case that it is and that that has now happened, we must make sure that we speak loudly and that any regulations and any regulatory authority come through the elected bodies of the United States of America, not through bureaucracies and certainly not through would-be treaties or agreements from foreign countries.
Mr. Chair, I urge adoption of my amendment, and I yield back the balance of my time.
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Mr. PERRY. Mr. Chairman, this amendment prohibits the use of funds to take retaliatory actions against States that disagree with the EPA- mandated pollutant reduction goals that have been imposed upon them by the EPA.
Importantly, this amendment would not prevent the EPA from working with States to restore things like the Chesapeake Bay, which is what the EPA is supposed to be doing.
In 1985, the States in the Chesapeake Bay region recognized the need to address pollutants in the Bay and through their own initiative came together to conduct cleanup efforts. These State-driven efforts were largely successful. Water quality improved almost 50 percent from 1985 to 2010 without the EPA's involvement.
However, in 2010, the EPA seized the States' authority to determine their own method of compliance and threatened to take over the water quality plants. This 2010 power grab, known as the Chesapeake Bay TMDL, total maximum daily load, directly contradicts the intent of the Clean Water Act.
The Clean Water Act clearly acknowledges State authority in water quality and requires cooperation, which is happening through the Chesapeake Bay Commission rather than coercion between the States and the Federal Government.
These coercive methods have been tried and have failed. Water quality improvement has slowed, and last year the EPA acknowledged the 2025 goals likely cannot be met. The failures we have seen since Federalization of the bay cleanup efforts necessitate the reevaluation of this model and a return to the cooperative model that led to the early improvements and actual success.
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Mr. PERRY. Mr. Chair, let me clarify, prohibits the use of funds to take retaliatory actions--retaliatory. We are already working together. We are working with the EPA. As was said, this is a regional partnership and has been a regional partnership.
This isn't about industry getting a free pass to pollute anywhere. This is about the heavy-handed, coercive tactics of the EPA on States that want to do this, that got into this because this is what they wanted to do. We don't need the EPA.
By the way, go to some of these treatment plants, and do you know what the EPA's requirements are, Mr. Chairman? Beyond the limits of technology. They have to treat the water to beyond the limits of technology. Think about what that statement says. It says they can't get there from here, but the EPA is still going to fine them if they can't get there from here while acknowledging they can't get there from here.
All we are saying is, don't spend money on the extortionary, retaliatory, coercive tactics. Spend the money, if you are going to spend it, on actually working together to clean up the bay.
Mr. Chair, I don't know what else you need to hear. We are not against the EPA. We are not against cleaning up the bay. We are not against spending the money to clean up the bay. What we are against is the retaliatory actions that don't help clean up the bay and waste our money.
By the way, since we are talking about it, while Pennsylvania continues to try to get beyond the limits of technology, that the EPA acknowledges, some of the other States in the compact aren't interested but aren't fined under these retaliatory practices. This is punishment to some States but not to others, which we see as unfair, as you might imagine.
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Mr. PERRY. Mr. Chair, I think I have made my point, and the fact that the gentlewoman is reserving means there is no other point to make, so I am happy to listen.
Mr. Chair, I yield back the balance of my time.
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Mr. PERRY. Mr. Chair, this amendment strikes the funding for the Council on Environmental Quality.
Now, it sounds lofty and awesome. The Council on Environmental Quality was created by the National Environmental Policy Act in 1969 to advance environmental policies and to meet requirements under NEPA. Of course, it is duplicative because now we have the EPA. We create a new agency, but we never get rid of the other agency, and they both do the same thing.
This one is supercharged now. This administration has tasked the CEQ with developing policies on climate change, environmental justice, and Federal sustainability, all while creating more paperwork under NEPA that the previous administration actually worked to reverse.
Mr. Chairman, these policies are what is holding America back. Onerous NEPA requirements and State-level laws like those in California are holding back countless programs and construction projects around the country. You can't get anything permitted. Things take years upon years. People say, why does it take so long? This is why.
They are also part of the left's apparatus that aims to shift America's entire way of life by meeting unscientific emission goals. They are not scientific. They are political goals. They are not scientific goals.
As written, the Department of Energy's own estimate for their gas stove rule shows that only 4 percent of gas stoves available on the market today meet the new standard, essentially forcing Americans to choose electric stoves without any--it is not based on science. They just want you to use electricity, not gas, and so they come up with the metrics.
This is part of this Council on Environmental Quality. We don't need them. We have the EPA. We don't need the duplication.
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Mr. PERRY. Mr. Chair, I don't know about significant delays. We are already experiencing significant delays. All these construction projects take decades to complete.
If we are going to just keep doing the same thing, which apparently that is what the gentlewoman on the other side of aisle wants to do, we are going to continue to experience significant delays.
Maybe this isn't the answer. I would be happy to hear what the answer is if it is not this, but doing the same thing isn't going to change anything. That is what we are looking to do, to make it more efficient.
The EPA can do this work. The EPA should do this work. We don't need both these agencies at the same time duplicating each other's efforts and wasting American tax dollars.
Mr. Chair, I urge adoption, and I yield back the balance of my time.
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Mr. PERRY. Mr. Chair, I rise as the designee of the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Pfluger).
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Mr. PERRY. Mr. Chair, two summers ago, the EPA released a regulatory agenda which included the consideration of redesignation of ozone attainment in the Permian Basin.
This wholly discretionary action would impose new regulatory burdens, new regulations on the U.S. oil and gas industry, which will only worsen the cost-of-living problems that we already have and the high energy problems that we are already experiencing.
A nonattainment redesignation will have considerable, almost an unbelievable, negative local impacts that cannot be overstated. In rural America, the energy industry generates high-paying jobs for working families and is the driver of the Texas and New Mexico economies.
Additionally, the industry annually contributes over $20 billion to State of Texas local coffers to fund public education, emergency responders, hospitals, conservation projects, and more. If the EPA finalizes this redesignation, most rural communities in this area will face substantial economic hardship. Somebody is going to have to make up that money.
By the way, it is not just Texas and the Permian Basin. If you ever travel there, if you are in the airport, you will see people traveling to and from the Permian Basin because of the jobs there. They are going to the basin for the jobs. They are flying back to the East Coast. They will work a couple of weeks on and take a week off and go back to the East Coast, so it is not just the Permian Basin that is going to be affected. It is States like Pennsylvania, Virginia, and Georgia, where the men and women that I talked to when I was there in the airport were traveling to and from.
In May of this year, Representative Pfluger hosted the Region 6 Administrator to see the impacts of a potential redesignation and the actions producers are already taking to reduce emissions to record levels.
During her visit, it was made clear that the EPA does not have monitors on the Texas side of the Permian Basin. They don't even have monitors there. All the data that is being used to build the case for the nonattainment redesignation is based on either modeling or monitors in some other State, not even in Texas.
We have seen this before. That is why Representative Pfluger recently introduced the Show the Data Act, which mandates that any nonattainment redesignation by the EPA cannot be based on air quality monitor data from some other State, area, or counties being designated. They have to be in the county, in the State. That would be nice.
The Permian Basin is proud of its environmental record. Their producers have led the world in emissions reduction, innovation, and sustainable practices. Permian Basin producers continue to reduce emissions of ozone precursors while increasing energy production.
As a matter of fact, methane emissions intensity in the Permian Basin dropped by nearly 70 percent between 2011 and 2020 even as oil and gas production in the region rose by over 320 percent. They didn't need the Federal Government coming down there with monitors outside the area telling them how to do that.
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Mr. PERRY. Mr. Chair, I suspect that Representative Pfluger would be aghast at the claim that this is a legislative earmark. There is no money involved in this.
By the way, the air quality has continued to improve. Since 1990, ozone concentration has decreased by 25 percent and emissions of ozone precursors like VOCs and nitrogen oxides have dropped by 47 percent and 65 percent.
Let me just tell you, Mr. Chairman: This is how this goes. The EPA sets a level through the Clean Air Act, they attain it, and then the EPA just keeps lowering it and lowering it and lowering it. It is used by the left by people who hate the oil and gas industry, hate civilization, and hate energy to say that you can no longer produce because you can't attain it. That's what they do.
To say it is not going to have any effect if we put them in the nonattainment zone, it is not going to have any effect on the producers, on local businesses--if it is not going to have any effect, then why would you do it? It is going to have an effect.
They are going to be out of jobs. That is the effect. It is a thinly veiled attempt to curb oil and gas production, and it will destroy local jobs, State revenues, and, more importantly, our national security.
Do you think China or Russia, which country that is competing with us in the oil and gas industry, which country do you think is telling their producers that they are not meeting attainment? None of them. Do you think Iran is doing that?
We are buying Venezuelan oil. We are buying Russian gas in the northeast. It is absurd. Congress must not allow this to move forward.
Mr. Chair, I yield back the balance of my time.
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Mr. PERRY. Mr. Chair, this amendment prohibits any of the funding from being used to carry out environmental justice activities.
Let me explain this to you. Environmental justice is nothing more than the synthesis of divisive racial ideology and radical environmentalism in the same package. This entire ideology is based on the notion that Federal environmental funding should be allocated based on immutable characteristics.
Biden's Justice40 Initiative directs 40 percent of Federal clean energy and energy efficiency spending based on ethnicity, migrant status, and income status.
How is that fair in America? I don't hear anything about the fact that poor communities are hurt the hardest by this administration's inflationary energy policy.
Just last year, the Census Bureau found that 36 percent of consumers say it has been somewhat to very difficult for them to pay their usual bills in the last 7 days. That is a 25 percent increase from the prior year. I hear it in my own district.
Environmental justice is just another way for this administration to funnel dollars, your tax dollars, to radical leftwing groups, including anti-Israel groups. I think that is important to note today.
In December of 2023, the Biden administration announced it would award $600 million in environmental justice funding. Fifty million dollars went to the Climate Justice Alliance, which organized anti- Israel protests in the Capitol rotunda last year.
What does any of that have to do with the environment?
Climate Justice Alliance's website has a ``Free Palestine'' web page that states: ``The path to climate justice travels through a free Palestine. . . . ''
I am sorry. I don't see the nexus.
Will my Democrat colleagues vote to send money to these groups, Iran's useful idiots, by opposing this amendment on the day that the Prime Minister of Israel came and addressed a joint session? I sure hope not.
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Mr. PERRY. Mr. Chair, I don't know about all Americans. As a matter of fact, many of the communities that I represent are lower income. They are struggling to pay their electricity bills, and I doubt that they have gotten $50 million or part of what the Climate Justice Alliance got.
Most of my constituents don't have time to run around protesting with ``Free Palestine'' signs the day that the Prime Minister of Israel was addressing Congress.
I will tell you this. Justice should not be based on ethnicity, migrant status, or income status. Justice should be blind in America. Unfortunately, we have gotten away from that, and this is funding it.
I suggest that we all vote in favor of this and have justice be blind and have all Americans and all citizens treated equally.
Mr. Chair, I yield back the balance of my time.
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