Department of State, Foreign Operations, and Related Programs Appropriations Act, 2021

Floor Speech

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Ms. McCOLLUM. Mr. Speaker, I rise to support the fiscal year 2021 Interior, Environment, and Related Agencies appropriations bill. Thank you to my partner in this, Ranking Member Joyce, for his collaboration and partnership throughout this process. I am grateful for the leadership of Chairwoman Lowey and Ranking Member Granger.

Last year, House Democrats secured significant new investments in environmental protection and land conservation. This bill builds on those successes to advance priorities of American families, ensuring that we have clean air and clean water to protect our children's health. We protect our most special places and endangered species and take meaningful actions to address climate change.

The subcommittee recommends a total of $36.8 billion in discretionary funding, an increase of $771 million over last year's enacted level.

The bill also includes $2.4 billion in fire cap adjusted funds for suppression operations.

The bill includes an additional $15 billion in emergency-designated infrastructure investments. These investments will increase access to quality healthcare and education and help clean up contaminated lands, polluted water, and unhealthy air.

With yesterday's passage of the Great American Outdoors Act in fiscal year 2021, the Land and Water Conservation Fund will be fully funded at $900 million, the first time this has happened in over 40 years.

I thank all of our constituents for making this passage a reality.

Back to this bill. We reject the dangerous policies and funding cuts proposed by the Trump administration. Instead, we move forward by investing our resources in ways that keep our communities safe and healthy. We invest in protection and preservation of our landscapes and our biodiversity.

I am particularly proud that this bill includes protections for our Nation's most visited wilderness, the Boundary Waters. It will put a halt to the use of funds in the next fiscal year to review or approve mine plans in the watershed of this treasured wilderness.

But let me be clear: The operations of the current taconite mines of Minnesota's iron ore range are not impacted. There are no iron mines with plans under review. But there is a foreign-owned mining conglomerate with a plan under review for a toxic copper-sulfide ore mine on the doorstep of the Boundary Waters. The Trump administration cannot be trusted to conduct this environmental review.

Multiple Cabinet members pledged in congressional hearings to complete a mineral withdrawal study within this very watershed. Instead, they abandoned the congressionally directed environmental review after 20 months, 4 months from completion, and they refuse to release results.

This bill seeks to protect the Boundary Waters from an administration that has shown a lack of transparency, respect for science, or the ability to follow our Nation's environmental laws.

Our subcommittee continues its nonpartisan approach to issues facing our Native American brothers and sisters. We provide $3.5 billion for the Bureau of Indian Affairs, Bureau of Indian Education, and the Office of the Special Trustee for American Indians, and $6.5 billion to the Indian Health Service. This is another step in the right direction toward upholding the Federal Government's trust and treaty obligations, but the work continues.

The bill contains provisions related to ending the use of Confederate symbols on our public lands. Confederate flags and memorials have long been symbols of oppression and discrimination, and I am committed to doing everything we can to help this country confront and heal its legacy of racism. This is not about erasing our history, but it is about whether we are willing to do the hard work that is needed to confront the truth of our history and to work to right past wrongs.

This is a good bill that works to tell the history of our country, even though sometimes it is painful to do so. It is a good bill that strives to use our natural resources wisely to protect our air, our water, and our land and to clean up those places that have been polluted in the past. This bill embraces conservation and the judicial use of our public lands, and yes, at times, it seeks to showcase the beauty of our natural resources that have been given to us by our creator.

This is a good bill, and I encourage Members of this House to support it.

I want to thank staff on both sides of the aisle for their hard work, including Rita, Jocelyn, Kusai, Janet, Peter, Donna, Tyler, Kristen, Darren, and Rebecca Taylor on my personal staff.

Mr. Speaker, I urge all Members to support this bill.

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Ms. McCOLLUM. Madam Speaker, I claim the time in opposition to the amendment.

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Ms. McCOLLUM. Madam Speaker, this amendment indiscriminately cuts programs in this bill, not giving one bit of thought to the merit of the program within the bill that it would cut.

For instance, it would cut--well, it would cut the Indian Health Service, and that would mean fewer patients seen, especially during the COVID pandemic, which we know has affected the Native American population in a very dramatic, painful, and hurtful way.

It would mean fewer safety inspectors, ensuring that accidents and oil spills do not occur, which means endangering the lives of oil rig workers and our environment.

It would worsen our Nation's drinking water and sanitation infrastructure deferred maintenance problem, which means more children would be exposed to lead in their drinking water.

More generally, investments in our environmental infrastructure and our public lands would be halted, and the associated jobs would be lost, jobs Americans desperately need.

More importantly, this amendment, as I said, would contribute to lives being lost in Indian Country. And I do not say that lightly, Madam Speaker. Tribes are being particularly hard-hit by the coronavirus, and this amendment would only compound the problem.

And let me tell you a little more about what critical programs would be cut in Indian Country. It would mean cuts to basic healthcare and diabetes programs. It would mean cuts to child and maternal health. As we know, our Native brothers and sisters--my Native sisters in particular, suffer high infant mortality rates. It would mean cuts to mental health service at a time when this population in our country, the indigenous people, who were here first, would be suffering even more than they are today with the mental health crisis, as they cannot go to their customs and traditions when mourning the loss of lives because of not being able to gather.

It has been a nonpartisan goal of the Committee on Appropriations--a nonpartisan goal of this entire body--to work to improve the health status of our Native American brothers and sisters. This amendment guts those efforts. It will set Indiana Country back. I dare say, it could set Indian Country back by decades, because we have so much more work to do to address the health disparity.

This amendment would not encourage agencies to do more with less. It would simply force agencies, and especially those serving our Native American Nations, to do less for their Tribal members, less healthcare.

So I urge Members to strongly oppose this amendment, and I reserve the balance of my time.

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Ms. McCOLLUM. Madam Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

Madam Speaker, once again, this is an across-the-board indiscriminate cut. We all might agree that there are programs and activities that take place in these bills that we could see a cut with. But this is an across-the-board 5 percent cut, which will deeply, deeply affect the gains that we have been struggling to make in a nonpartisan way in Indian Country, and I simply cannot be silent while that happens.

We have to do what we can do to make sure that the treaty and obligations that this United States Government entered into with the First Nations, who were here first, are honored, and part of that is healthcare.

Madam Speaker, I ask others to join me to oppose this amendment, which if passed, will harm the American people and do, in my opinion, irreparable damage to the healthcare and education of our Native American brothers and sisters.

I oppose this amendment. I encourage my colleagues to join me.

Madam Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

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Ms. McCOLLUM. Madam Speaker, I rise in opposition to this amendment.

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Ms. McCOLLUM. Madam Speaker, for 4 years in a row, President Trump has set up a truly--well, he sent us a budget that is just not workable when it comes to his budget request.

On a bipartisan amendment, especially when it comes to the EPA, we have passed budgets at the end and sent them over to the EPA with more money than the President has requested. And why? Because we know we have to fight to have clean air, clean water. We need to have good scientists. We need to have researchers. We need to have people out doing inspections. We need to have our Environmental Protection Agency working.

As I pointed out, the Congress has overwhelmingly rejected these requests for the President's cuts to the EPA. I predict we are going to see that happen again, for a fourth year in a row. That is because the EPA's environmental programs and management account does vital work, really important work protecting our air and drinking water, restoring our waterways, and safeguarding us from toxic chemicals.

It has been reported worldwide, because of COVID, we all know people are driving less. We know that our factories, unfortunately, aren't running the way they should be, and a lot of people are out of work. So, yes, the air quality has improved because of the President's mishandling of the COVID emergency that we are facing. But we don't want to go back to those pollution levels. We want to work together in a bipartisan way.

Another thing that the gentleman cuts are the geographic programs hugely popular in this Congress, and here, they are overwhelmingly supported bipartisanly--program work like the Great Lakes, Chesapeake Bay, Puget Sound, Long Island Sound, and the Florida estuaries. These programs would be devastated if we adopted the President's budget.

Members on both sides of the aisle asked for robust funding in these accounts. Rural communities that rely upon technical assistance grants in this account, we help them to make sure that they can afford safe drinking water for their constituents and that they can safely manage their sewer and wastewater systems. We worked together to help rural communities.

Consumers rely on the EPA's ENERGY STAR program to help them choose energy-efficient appliances, which save them money and help the environment. Madam Speaker, I can speak from personal experience, having sold appliances for many years, how important that ENERGY STAR was to someone when they were making a decision because they wanted to save money on their electric bill.

Well, the Trump budget, the way it was presented to our subcommittee, would have slashed all these programs and much more, and the impacts to public health would be devastating.

The American people overwhelmingly agree that we should be investing more to protect our families from pollution, not less.

Madam Speaker, I urge my colleagues to oppose this amendment, and I reserve the balance of my time.

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Ms. McCOLLUM. Madam Speaker, I am glad the gentleman brought up the $15 billion in the EPA's emergency spending budget.

It is for wastewater treatment. That is for clean drinking water. That is for infrastructure. That is for jobs. That is so the next generation inherits clean water and a sewage waste disposal system that they don't find crumbling all around them because of neglect and because we have not lived up to our obligation to take care of those infrastructure investments.

For 50 years, the EPA has been responsible for protecting health and the environment, and they have been doing a job in cleaning up the environment, as I mentioned with the restoration programs. The Chesapeake Bay, it is amazing what has happened, the Great Lakes.

Congressman Joyce and I are constantly working with other Great Lakes representatives, Republicans, Democrats, and Independents, who ask us to do even more in investing.

These Trump administration budget cuts that the gentleman would have us return to would cripple the EPA's ability to accomplish those missions. I urge my colleagues to oppose the amendment.

Madam Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

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Ms. McCOLLUM. Madam Speaker, on that I demand the yeas and nays.

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Ms. McCOLLUM. Madam Speaker, I rise in opposition to the amendment.

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Ms. McCOLLUM. Madam Speaker, as I said on the other amendment, for 4 years in a row, President Trump has sent us truly appalling budget request numbers for the EPA, and the Congress has overwhelmingly rejected these requests on a bipartisan basis. As I said, I predict we will do that again for the fourth year in a row.

The EPA's science and technology account does vital research on health effects of toxic chemicals and pollutants. Now, the Trump administration, by not doing this research and by not moving forward, protects corporate polluters' profits, not the health and safety of the American people. That is why, in my opinion, the administration's budget proposes to cut hundreds of millions of dollars for funding research on things like PFAS.

Now, in my constituency, I have several major municipalities that can no longer just take the water out of the ground the way that they had before, send it to the homeowners, and they could turn on their tap and safely drink it. No, it has to be filtered for PFAS. We need research. We need standards on it.

Lead. How many discussions have we had on this House floor? How many parents have we heard from? How many children have we heard from about the effects of lead in water?

Mercury. I am from Minnesota. We have fish advisories because of mercury. Pregnant women have to be careful how much fish they consume. We have postings when we go to our lakes about how much fish we can consume. Mercury is a concern to many of us.

And climate change. I am not afraid to talk about climate change. I was just on the phone with the Secretary of the Air Force, and we were talking about what we are going to have to spend in Alaska. You know, the permafrost is causing issues with radar installations not being stable--climate change. The permafrost, which is disappearing, is affecting the ability for runways and safe landings. Climate change.

So, do we need to do the research on climate change? It is a national security issue. I am glad the EPA is out there looking at it, working with other agencies within the United States.

People across this country overwhelmingly agree we should be investing more research in PFAS. We should be getting the lead out of our water. We should be understanding what is going on with mercury. We should also be addressing the effects of climate change and, most of all, protecting our families from pollution.

I urge my colleagues to oppose this amendment. Madam Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

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Ms. McCOLLUM. Madam Speaker, I will read from the National Geographic, published April 8, 2020:

``As the novel coronavirus tears around the world, it's exploiting our biggest weaknesses, from creaking health care systems to extreme social inequality. Its relationship with one pervasive and neglected problem, however, has been more tangled: Air pollution has intensified the pandemic. . . .''

So we need to do studies on that, and the EPA works on that, but at the same time, the coronavirus has temporarily cleaned the skies.

As I said earlier, for 50 years, the EPA has been responsible for protecting public health and the environment.

We need to do research to understand how to protect public health and the environment; and more importantly than ever, we need to understand how to protect public health and the environment for people who have long been neglected, the people who are suffering the most right now, and that is the inequality, the injustice we are seeing between Black and Brown people in the United States.

We need to do better with the EPA for addressing social injustices that have affected those populations most by living in polluted areas and being subjected to pollution. I want to work on that in Congress. The administration's cuts would cripple the EPA's ability to achieve that mission.

Madam Speaker, if I understand correctly, the gentleman has yielded his time.

Madam Speaker, I urge my colleagues to oppose this amendment, and I yield back the balance of my time.

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