Press Releases

For more than 15 hours on the House floor last week, Interior, Environment, and Related Agencies Appropriations Subcommittee Ranking Member Chellie Pingree fought back against 83 extreme Republican amendments to a Fiscal Year 2024 appropriations bill. The funding bill written and passed by House Republicans includes a crippling 39 percent cut to the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and policy provisions that will endanger public health, strain the economy, and increase costs. Below are key highlights from the marathon debate led by Congresswoman Pingree.

WATCH: While speaking against a Republican amendment that would bar the use of certain funds to take down national monuments, Pingree enlightened Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) that Robert E. Lee was not a Founding Father of the United States. Pingree successfully argued against Greene’s amendment, which failed to pass.

WATCH: Rep. Andrew Ogles (R-Tenn.) argued that a “free market” is where the oil and gas industry doesn’t pay reasonable rates when it is extracting resources from the land that belongs to all Americans.

WATCH: Rep. John Rose (R-Tenn.) was focused on plastic straws.

 

WATCH: Pingree successfully argued against an amendment that would have prohibited funds for the EPA's Clean School Bus Program, which has already been funded through the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law.

WATCH: Pingree pushes back against Rep. Eric Burlison’s (R-Mo.) assertion that climate change is part of Democrats’ “agenda.”

The House Republicans’ 2024 Interior, Environment, and Related Agencies funding bill includes $25.4 billion, which is $13.4 billion below the 2023 level, a cut of 35 percent. With only 11 days remaining until the US government faces a shutdown, the partisan funding package is dead-on-arrival in the Democratic-controlled Senate.

Specifically, House Republicans’ appropriations legislation:

• Hinders the U.S. response to the Climate Crisis and fails to address the growing number and severity of extreme weather events by cutting efforts to reduce carbon emissions and community resiliency programs. 
• Slashes funding for national parks, threatening Americans’ ability to enjoy public lands.
• Exacerbates environmental discrimination against rural and poor communities by defunding environmental justice initiatives. 
• Promotes dirty energy by requiring fossil fuels lease sales while prohibiting growth in clean energy projects.
• Hastens ecosystem decline by allowing harmful and dirty mining activities and by removing Endangered Species Act protections for numerous species.
• Promotes hate and discrimination by prohibiting funds for advancing diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility, censoring commemoration of LGTBQI+ pride, and prohibiting the Smithsonian Institution from highlighting the contributions of American Latinos in U.S. history and culture.

 

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