Expressing Support for Rural Communities Across the United States As Stewards of the Environment, Major Suppliers of United States Energy Resources, Critical Providers of Food Production and Manufacturing Capacity, and Drivers of National Economic Stability, and Recognizing the Work of the House of Representatives in the 119th Congress in Support of Those Vital Communities

Floor Speech

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Mr. RUIZ. Mr. Speaker, I rise today to represent and speak up for the people in California's 25th Congressional District, home to farmworkers, laborers, and families in the Coachella, Imperial, and San Jacinto Valleys who wake up each morning breathing some of the most polluted air in the United States.

These are communities where childhood asthma rates range from 20 to 35 percent. We have the highest asthma hospitalization rate in the whole State of California.

These are communities where particulate matter concentrations regularly reach 10 times the Federal limit.

These are communities where Medicaid is not a talking point. It is what stands between a sick child and the treatment that they need.

Today, we are voting on H. Res. 1182, and I want to be direct with my colleagues about what this resolution actually is because the title alone does not tell the story.

This resolution is titled: ``Expressing support for rural communities. . . . '' But when you read the actual text, when you look at the specific provision it celebrates, you find something very, very different, very heartbreaking.

You see, this resolution is a political message. That is all it is, a self-congratulatory shield built to cover up the harm Republicans have created in rural America.

Let me go through what this resolution actually says. The resolution celebrates ``legislation to reform processes under the Clean Air Act for establishing and implementing air quality standards . . . so that rural areas that experience wildfires or foreign sources of pollution are not disadvantaged. . . . ''

What they are actually celebrating is weakening the National Ambient Air Quality Standards, the science-based thresholds that determine how much pollution is safe to breathe.

The FENCES Act, which Republicans passed just last week and this resolution applauds, would strip EPA of its authority to sanction States that fail to reduce air pollution and hand a free pass to the worst polluters with no accountability, no incentive to clean up, and no recourse for rural communities living downwind.

In my district, which is also rural America, dust from unpaved roads, farms, off-road vehicles, the expanding exposed lake bed of the Salton Sea, diesel emissions, ozone, agricultural smoke, and contaminants like hydrogen sulfide combine into a toxic mix that threatens the health of more than half a million people living in rural America. This resolution wants us to applaud making it easier for that to get worse.

The resolution celebrates ``legislation to provide rural Americans with choice in the vehicles they purchase and drive by eliminating costly and impracticable electric vehicle mandates.'' What they are celebrating is the termination of the clean vehicle tax credit, the $7,500 credit that made electric vehicles accessible to working families.

Families in my district where temperatures routinely exceed 110 degrees are now priced out of cleaner vehicles, locked into higher fuel costs and breathing dirtier tailpipe emissions.

That is not choice. That is a trap.

The resolution celebrates legislation to ``remove restrictions on exporting U.S. liquefied natural gas, which will increase economic and employment opportunities for rural communities.''

What they are celebrating is prioritizing LNG exports over the energy costs and needs of the American families they claim to support in rural America. That is because when we export more gas, then there is less domestically. When there is less domestically, then domestic prices rise, making it more expensive for rural America. Rural families pay more to heat and cool their homes. This is not energy independence. This is energy exportation at the rural America's expense.

The resolution celebrates legislation to ``reduce the costs of home and commercial appliances by rolling back burdensome Biden-Harris regulations.''

What they are actually celebrating is rolling back energy efficiency standards, meaning families will pay more on their utility bills month after month and year after year, as if costs aren't up in rural America already. In a desert region back home where air conditioning is not a luxury but a survival necessity, that is a direct hit to household budgets that are already stretched.

Through the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, better known as the big, ugly law, the centerpiece of everything this resolution is celebrating, Republicans cut nearly $1 trillion from Medicaid and $120 billion from SNAP, the most in history. This will disproportionately hurt rural Americans.

That bill put over 300 rural hospitals at risk to close. It will leave 15 million people uninsured, many of them in rural America. It will raise average household energy bills by up to $192 annually, and even in California $670. It gutted the National Environmental Policy Act's community review process so that local, rural community members' voices are shut down.

It phased out clean energy tax credits from the Inflation Reduction Act, raising energy costs for families in rural America, added an estimated $3 trillion to the national debt, and accelerated the projected insolvency of Social Security and Medicare by 1 year.

Mr. Speaker, I am a physician. I have taken care of patients in my district. I know what it means when a family cannot get to a hospital because the closest one has closed. I know what it means when a child's asthma goes untreated because their family lost Medicaid.

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Mr. RUIZ. Mr. Speaker, I know what it means when a farm worker spends the day in the field breathing air that exceeds Federal safety limits and then goes home to a house where they cannot afford the utility bill because their appliances are less efficient, their gas costs more, and their child suffers from asthma.

This resolution does not reopen a single closed rural hospital. It does not put food on a single rural kitchen table. It does not clean the air a child breathes in rural America. It does not restore the Medicaid coverage it took from millions of Americans. It does not undo the harm of nearly $1 trillion in cuts to programs that rural families, who are the very people this resolution so-called claims to champion, depend on to survive.

What this resolution does is ask this Chamber to applaud the way things are going to hurt rural America, to put a bow on it, and to call it support.

Mr. Speaker, this is not support. This is a cover-up.

For the families I represent who are already carrying more than their fair share of pollution, poverty, and neglect, this resolution is an insult dressed up as a tribute.

If my colleagues truly support rural communities, they will repeal those cuts. If they truly support clean air, they will stop celebrating legislation that weakens the standards that protect it. If they truly support working families, they will stop handing corporations exemptions while families pay the price.

Mr. Speaker, vote ``no'' on this do-nothing messaging resolution, H. Res. 1182.

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