Fire Improvement and Reforming Exceptional Events Act

Floor Speech

Mr. Speaker, I rise in opposition to H.R. 6387, the FIRE Act. The FIRE Act is yet another dishonest attempt, in my opinion, by Republicans to weaken the Clean Air Act, which will make Americans sicker while healthcare costs skyrocket.

Republicans are peddling this dangerous bill as an attempt to promote prescribed burns and combat wildfires. As has been true for the other dirty bills that we considered over the last week or so, this bill fails to address the stated goal and instead provides overly broad exemptions to the Clean Air Act that will harm American families and children.

The FIRE Act does little to make it easier for States to use prescribed burns as a tool for wildfire management. Instead, it expands the definition of exceptional events that States can claim when demonstrating compliance with air quality standards, to include regularly occurring weather like drought and heat. To put it simply, the FIRE Act would give corporate polluters a free pass on the Clean Air Act and use a hot day as an excuse to ignore the harm inflicted on the health of Americans.

Prescribed fire is an essential tool for wildlife management, particularly as climate change increases the occurrence of large, high- intensity wildfires. When done properly, prescribed fires can effectively manage wildfires while reducing smoke exposure to wildfire- prone communities. When disaster strikes and wildfires occur, States should not be punished for pollution that is beyond their control.

Fortunately, the Clean Air Act already gives EPA the flexibility to qualify wildfire and prescribed burns as exceptional events under the Clean Air Act, which States can claim when demonstrating compliance with air quality standards. In fact, Trump's EPA issued a memo clearly stating that the agency will not count emissions from prescribed fires toward attainment designations under the National Ambient Air Quality Standards, making provisions of this bill essentially redundant and unnecessary.

It is worth highlighting that this bill goes much further than wildfires and prescribed burns. As I mentioned, the FIRE Act drastically changes the definition of exceptional events to include regularly occurring weather events, like drought and hot days. If signed into law, the FIRE Act would allow States to write off all pollution that occurs during a dry spell or heat wave, events we know will occur more often due to climate change.

I find this provision to be deeply troubling. We know climate change is making drought and heat waves more persistent. Republicans want to use them as justification to increase pollution, which will worsen public health and accelerate climate change, without any consequences.

It is another line of evidence that Republicans are more interested in helping out their polluter friends than protecting the health and well-being of Americans.

Unfortunately, Republican attempts to undermine the public health protections at the core of the Clean Air Act are commonplace. The health harms of air pollution are well documented and being felt by communities across the country.

Today, over half of Americans live in an area with unsafe levels of air pollution. These communities see more diagnoses of diseases like asthma, COPD, heart disease, and certain types of cancer, all of which require long-term treatment and medication.

These things are becoming more common, but now Republicans and the Trump administration want to make it easier for industry to pollute more. Worse, they want to cover up these harms.

House Republicans are doing nothing to lower costs or address the affordability crisis. Instead, over the last week, they have had us debating bills that gut the Clean Air Act's public health protections, and this bill is no exception. It is a retread of old ideas that would drive up pollution above levels that are safe to breathe. The bill does nothing to improve the lives of the everyday Americans we are elected to serve.

Mr. Speaker, I urge my colleagues to vote ``no'' on this dangerous, damaging, and, essentially, dirty air bill.

Mr. Speaker, I would like to remind my colleagues of the cost of air pollution to the American people because it seems they are only focused on the cost to their polluter friends.

More than 26 million people, including over 4.5 million children, in the U.S. live with asthma. Asthma causes nearly 1.8 million emergency department visits, more than 94,000 hospitalizations, and an estimated $80 billion in healthcare costs annually. Air pollution is known to cause and exacerbate asthma.

Republicans claim that existing regulatory processes, like exceptional events demonstrations, are too hard and take too long. They don't acknowledge why we have these processes in the first place, and that is to protect the health of our families, our children, and the most vulnerable among them.

The FIRE Act would worsen health harms to our communities. While the Clean Air Act has successfully cut air pollution in the U.S. by nearly 80 percent in its over 50-year history, nearly half of the U.S. population still lives in areas with poor air quality. We should be taking action to protect public health, not rolling back safeguards that the Republicans find inconvenient.

The FIRE Act has serious problems that allow industry to exploit hot days and drought to drive up pollution without consequence. That is the problem.

Mr. Speaker, I urge my colleagues to vote ``no,'' and I reserve the balance of my time.

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Mr. PALLONE. Dexter).

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Mr. PALLONE. Mr. Speaker, I continue to reserve the balance of my time.

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Mr. PALLONE. Stansbury).

Mr. Speaker, I need to respond to the comments made by the gentleman from Colorado. The EPA promulgated an exceptional events rule in 2016 to allow States and Tribes to use prescribed burns for fire management and exempt emissions from wildfire from regulatory requirements. This was reinforced by a 2025 EPA memo titled ``EPA Policy on Provisions to Allow Wildland Prescribed Fire in Clean Air Act State Implementation Plans.''

This bill is unnecessary, and I am going to repeat that. Republicans are claiming that the process is so burdensome and that very few determinations are made by the EPA. That is misleading. The value of prescribed burns is to mitigate wildfire and to minimize air quality impacts on communities.

That is why forest managers conduct prescribed burns under particular weather conditions. Under these conditions, prescribed burns do not contribute significantly to the area's ambient air quality, which means an exceptional event demonstration may not be necessary in the first place.

Proponents of this bill have lots of complaints about the current program. However, the FIRE Act does nothing to reform the exceptional event demonstration process for States or the EPA. Instead, it just provides broad exemptions, which is not what should be done.
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Mr. PALLONE. Madam Speaker, I yield myself the balance of my time.

Madam Speaker, in closing, the FIRE Act is a bad faith attempt by Republicans to let industry pollute without consequence under the guise of expanding the use of prescribed fire.

In reality, it would allow everyday occurrences, like hot days and droughts, to be excluded from air quality determinations. We know that these events are occurring more often and with more intensity. Excluding these now common events all but ensures that communities across the country will continue to breathe unhealthy air and suffer the health consequences.

The Clean Air Act is one of the most successful laws to protect Americans ever enacted by Congress because it prioritizes public health and gives States flexibility to foster economic growth simultaneously.

We have made significant progress, but still too many people live in areas with dangerous air pollution. Every year, over 100,000 Americans die prematurely as a result of air pollution. Doctors and scientists widely consider fine particulate matter to be one of the most toxic air pollutants, as it can cause asthma, COPD, heart disease, and certain types of cancer.

We can't ignore the broader political landscape in which we are considering this bill, either. Earlier this year, EPA announced it will no longer consider the benefits of protection of public health when developing new rules for particulate matter and ozone pollution. Instead, EPA will consider only the compliance costs for industry. That makes it even more important that any Clean Air Act legislation taken up by Congress ensures that public health protections remain at the center of the law.

The American people are asking us to lower healthcare costs. They are asking us to ensure that our families have safe water to drink and healthy air to breathe. Our responsibility is to them, but our Republican colleagues seem to only answer to their corporate polluter buddies who are asking for regulatory rollbacks to save a few dollars. That is just a bad deal for the American people.

Madam Speaker, I urge my colleagues to vote against this dirty air bill, and I yield back the balance of my time.

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