Providing for Congressional Disapproval of the Rule Submitted By the Environmental Protection Agency Relating to ``Review of Final Rule Reclassification of Major Sources As Area Sources Under Section 112 of the Clean Air Act''

Floor Speech

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Mr. TONKO. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding.

Mr. Speaker, I rise in strong opposition to this resolution. S.J. Res. 31 is irresponsible, especially as we wait to see whether Republicans will bring forward their budget bill to strip healthcare from millions of Americans to give tax breaks to billionaires.

However, this resolution would allow 1,800 facilities that emit the worst of the worst cancer-causing toxic air pollutants to avoid Clean Air Act requirements that protect the air that we breathe.

It would eliminate a 2024 EPA rule that ensures large industrial facilities like chemical plants and oil refineries control their hazardous air pollution. Hazardous air pollutants are known or suspected to cause cancer, birth defects, developmental disorders, and neurological problems, even at extremely low levels of exposure.

It has been suggested that the 2024 rule eliminates the incentive for facilities to deploy new technologies to reduce pollution. However, we have some real-world data on this, and there is zero evidence that polluters will go above and beyond what is legally required of them by installing new technologies once they have avoided the major source requirements of the Clean Air Act.

The first Trump administration initially undid the ``once in, always in'' policy in 2020, and over 200 facilities were able to escape those given requirements. As far as I know, none of these sites has taken additional steps to install new pollution controls.

On the other hand, many of these facilities have been free to run their existing, previously installed pollution controls less. When they were categorized as a major source, they needed to take steps to drastically reduce their emissions as much as possible, based on demonstrated, cost-effective technologies.

In many cases, that resulted in emission levels dropping far below the major source thresholds, but the Clean Air Act's intent was never to bring pollution levels right below some arbitrary major source threshold. It is about reducing emissions and potentially even eliminating emissions as much as it is cost-effectively possible.

Rescinding this rule would give another 1,800 facilities the green light to shut off their long-installed pollution control equipment, spew hazardous air pollution right up to the major source trigger, and increase cancer-causing pollution without consequence.

The Clean Air Act is an incredible public health success story, and we are at risk of writing a new, dark chapter in this law's history. There have been five decades of strong, bipartisan support in Congress for the law, which has allowed us to make steady progress to reduce air pollution in our country.

Yes, in many places we are breathing cleaner air today than we were in the 1970s or 1990s, but that improvement is not guaranteed to be maintained if we start to chip away and backslide.

This resolution puts our previous progress in serious jeopardy, and the people who live along the fence lines of these 1,800 industrial facilities are at risk of facing the worst consequences.

These communities tend to be low income. I would venture that many rely on Medicaid. The one-two punch of this resolution with a budget bill to strip healthcare from nearly 14 million people is wrong. It will leave people with unhealthier air, fewer protections, and less access to healthcare to deal with the consequences--cancer, birth defects, and developmental disorders--of allowing these facilities to pollute more.

Mr. Speaker, I urge Members to oppose this resolution.

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