2027 Presidential Budget Request Will Make Life Harder
Floor Speech
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Ms. TLAIB. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from Illinois for his continued effort to protect and fight for working families.
For the last 7 years that I have been here, I have been pushing for us to fund and acknowledge that safe, accessible, and affordable drinking water is a human right. Right now, in our United States, we have programs for electricity and gas shut-offs, but nothing for water. Water is life. It is sometimes literally a barrier to a public health crisis.
Congresswoman Debbie Dingell and I are changing that. In 2021, we established the first-ever low-income housing water assistance program, a financial assistance program to pay off bills and debts and keep people's water connected during the pandemic. It was a total of $1.1 billion.
The program saved countless lives, but the money has run out. Millions of Americans right now are struggling to keep up with the affordability crisis and having their water shut off.
It is not just an issue in Detroit, but also in communities like the city of Inkster, Redford Township, and other areas in the 12th Congressional District. This is a nationwide issue. Every Congressional district right now has a water crisis.
That is why Congresswoman Dingell and I are introducing the Water Access and Affordability Act to establish a permanent low-income drinking water assistance program within the Environmental Protection Agency.
Our bill would dedicate $20 billion every year to keep people's water flowing. This program would include direct financial assistance and bill payments, debt relief, reconnection assistance, and water efficiency upgrades.
It will set up community advisory committees to help advise the EPA on how to implement these programs to make the biggest difference possible.
This bill would ban water shutoffs as a punishment for not being able to afford their water bills. This is the richest country in the world. We say it all the time, but it is important. Many families see the money flowing but not to essentials.
The President just requested a $1.5 trillion military budget, but they want to tell us they don't have money to make sure that every family in our country has access to clean drinking water. This bill is an important first step in our movement to recognize, again, that water is life. It is a human right.
This has become an issue for me and something very important because there was an African-American couple in my community in their seventies. Their story was published in one of our local outlets. One of the homeowners had put snow in a bucket to melt so he had water to be able to flush the toilet.
Their story talked about the fact that they worked all their lives. They paid for their home. They have to pay their taxes every year on their home. They have a little bit of bills here and there, but the water costs went so high that they just couldn't afford it. They literally, in their seventies, in their retirement, couldn't afford water.
I say this lovingly to my colleagues: It is about time we find money for our families here at home. If our country has money for endless wars, we have money to make sure that people aren't melting snow to flush their toilets or living in fear of getting their children taken away because water has been shut off.
We will literally take children away from homes that don't have access to water and spend money on putting them in foster care, but not make sure that, again, we have programs like this one to make sure that they are protected and have access to something that is lifesaving.
Mr. Speaker, water is a human right, and I hope my colleagues will try to support, again, the funding of this program. Trust me, all across the country, you will find a family that is struggling to pay their water bill.
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