Energy and Water Development and Related Agencies Appropriations Act, 2026

Floor Speech

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Ms. CASTOR of Florida. Mr. Chairman, I thank the ranking member for yielding me time and thank her for everything that she does to protect the pocketbooks of American families.

Mr. Chairman, American families and small business owners deserve lower electric bills, but Republicans in Congress are really sticking it to folks with higher costs at every turn, especially in this spending bill.

Mr. Chairman, Representative Kaptur is right. Household electric costs and energy prices have risen 10 percent this year. In some places, they have more than doubled, driven by Trump's tariffs; new demand from Big Tech AI data centers; and expensive, old, polluting plants.

Back home in Florida, Florida's largest utility has proposed the largest utility rate hike in U.S. history, amounting to $10 billion, that will raise Floridians' electric bills by hundreds of dollars every month.

Mr. Chair, Republicans in Congress are now making it worse. Their big, ugly bill, which was passed in July, already is projected to crush working families with higher costs, and now their spending bill adds insult to injury by slashing home improvement weatherization savings.

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Ms. CASTOR of Florida. Mr. Chair, I thank the gentlewoman for the time.

Let's talk about how Republicans in Congress are making it worse, harder for families to afford the cost of living, especially when it comes to their electric bills. Their big, ugly bill, which was passed in July, already is projected to crush working families with higher costs.

Mr. Chair, this spending bill adds insult to injury by slashing home improvement weatherization savings and taking a hatchet to cleaner, cheaper energy and the important initiatives to modernize the grid.

If my colleagues care about helping their neighbors out of the affordability squeeze, they will vote ``no'' on the Republican spending bill.

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