Hardline lawmakers are pushing for cuts to clean energy programs and the EPA budget. This move threatens to halt crucial climate progress at a time we really can’t afford to take a step backward.
That’s why Moms’ Elizabeth Brandt recently joined partners and members of Congress on Capitol Hill for a press event about the importance of a clean budget bill. She spoke alongside Senator Sheldon Whitehouse (RI) and Reps. Steny Hoyer (MD-5), Jan Schakowsky (IL-9), and Deborah Ross (NC-2) in opposition to proposed spending cuts and what are known as “poison pill riders,” bad faith amendments introduced to negate a bill’s intended purpose.
During her speech, Elizabeth discussed what’s at stake if the proposed budget cuts to clean energy programs happen. She highlighted the importance of EPA funding by sharing her personal experiences growing up in a city with heavy industry.
“I grew up in Tacoma, Washington, home to a copper smelter with its 562-foot smokestack, which sent lead, arsenic, and other contaminants up and away. Only the contamination never really went away. There is no away. Our air and soil became massively polluted. Grass didn’t grow in the yards closest to the smelter. We were forbidden to eat the pears that grew from the tree in our yard. A tunnel under the old smelter site would drip water from the ceiling. The water was so toxic it could take the paint off the car. We weren’t allowed to walk through the tunnel.”
The smelter’s loose regulations in the 1970s left an imprint on Elizabeth’s childhood and a toxic legacy that still prevails today. She painfully recalls all the children in her neighborhood who died of cancer and reveals that her sister was diagnosed with cancer as an adult. She can’t help but think there is a correlation between their community’s proximity to the copper smelter and the cancer cases.
EPA did eventually step in in Tacoma, clean up the smelter site, and make it possible for the neighborhood to become a beautiful waterfront destination—a transformation that many towns in the U.S. desperately need.
But this success story gets to the heart of Elizabeth’s message: The proposed funding cuts and underhanded amendments target communities seeking environmental justice. The cities that need environmental protections the most are the ones that would not receive funding under the proposed cuts.
“Of all the harmful riders in this budget, I am most outraged by one that prohibits funding related to environmental justice, including the Justice40 Initiative, which directs 40% of the overall benefits of certain federal investments to flow to disadvantaged communities. These include investments in clean energy, clean transit, clean water, affordable and sustainable housing, workforce development, remediation, and the reduction of legacy pollution.
“Let’s be real. Many low-income communities and communities of color have been passed over for the kind of protection and cleanup that my majority-white neighborhood received. Justice 40 is designed to get us closer to a world where Black, Latino, Indigenous families are all equally protected from environmental harms.”
Elizabeth and Moms across the country are advocating for a budget that reflects the values of equity and justice for all. To bring this to reality, we are calling on Congress to fund environmental agencies like EPA at the level established in the bipartisan debt ceiling deal, eliminate poison pill policy riders like those targeting the Justice40 Initiative, and prevent attacks on the historic climate progress made possible by the clean energy and transportation investments included in the Inflation Reduction Act. Now is the time to act on our commitment to the well-being of our people and our planet.
TELL PRESIDENT BIDEN & EPA: MOVE QUICKLY TO FINALIZE STRONG POLLUTION PROTECTIONS