Hill Heat

The hearing will be conducted via teleconference.

Text of the Science Committee Print and the Amendment in the Nature of a Substitute by Chair Eddie Bernice Johnson.

The proposed $45.4 billion Science Committee ANS includes:

Department of Energy ($20.6 billion)

• $5 billion for regional innovation initiatives
• $10.4 billion for the Department of Energy Office of Science laboratories, including $1.3 billion for the ITER fusion project
• $349 million for the Department of Energy Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy for NREL projects including the new EMAPS program and ARIES grid simulation
• $408 million for the Department of Energy Office of Nuclear Energy
• $20 million for the Department of Energy Office of Fossil Energy and Carbon Management
• $1.08 billion in general funds for Department of Energy National Laboratories, including
  • $377 million for Office of Science
  • $210 million for Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy
  • $40 million for Office of Nuclear Energy
  • $190 million for Office of Fossil Energy and Carbon Management
  • $102 million for the Office of Environmental Management
• $2 billion for fusion research and development
• $1.1 billion for Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy demonstration projects, including wind, solar, geothermal, hydropower, vehicles, bioenergy, and building technologies
• $70 million for a new Clean Energy Manufacturing Innovation Institute
• $52.5 million for university nuclear reactor research
• $10 million for demonstration projects on reducing the environmental impacts of fracking wastewater
• $20 million for the Office of Economic Impact and Diversity
• $50 million for the Office of the Inspector General

Environmental Protection Agency

• $264 million to conduct environmental research and development activities related to climate change, including environmental justice

FEMA

• $798 million for Assistance to Firefighters Grants

NASA ($4.4 billion)

• $4 billion for infrastructure and maintenance
• $388 million for climate change research and development

NIST ($4.2 billion)

• $1.2 billion for scientific and technical research, including resilience to natural hazards including wildfires, and greenhouse gas and other climate-related measurement
• $2 billion for American manufacturing support
• $1 billion for infrastructure and maintenance

NOAA ($4.2 billion)

• $1.2 billion for weather, ocean, and climate research and forecasting
• $265 million to develop and distribute actionable climate information for communities in an equitable manner
• $500 million to recruit, educate, and train a “climate-ready” workforce
• $70 million for high-performance computing
• $224 million for phased-array radar research and development
• $1 billion for hurricane hunter aircraft and radar systems
• $12 million for drone missions
• $743 million for deferred maintenance
• $173 million for space weather

National Science Foundation ($10.95 billion)

• $3.4 billion for infrastructure, including Antarctic bases – $300 million for minority-serving institutions
• $7.5 billion for research grants, including at least $400 million for climate change research and $700 million for minority-serving institutions
• $50 million for Office of the Inspector General

Introduced amendments:

• Amendment #R7 offered by Mr. Weber (R-TX)
• Amendment #009 offered by Ranking Member Lucas (R-OK)
• Amendment #R10 offered by Ranking Member Lucas (R-OK)
• Amendment #085 offered by Mr. Posey (R-FL)
• Amendment #022 offered by Mr. Feenstra (R-IA)
• Amendment #R13 offered by Ms. Bice (R-OK)
• Amendment #029 offered by Mr. Babin (R-TX)
• Amendment #030 offered by Mr. Babin (R-TX)
• Amendment #024 offered by Mr. Feenstra (R-IA)
• Amendment #001 offered by Mr. Ellzey (R-TX)
• Amendment #084 offered by Mr. Posey (R-FL)
• Amendment #054 offered by Mr. Sherman (D-CA)
• Amendment #R6 offered by Mr. Ellzey (R-TX)
• Amendment #R11 offered by Mr. Meijer (R-MI)
• Amendment #010 offered by Mr. Baird (R-IN)
• Amendment #031 offered by Mr. Babin (R-TX)
• Amendment #018 offered by Ms. Bice (R-OK)
• Amendment #019 offered by Ms. Bice (R-OK)
• Amendment #010 offered by Ranking Member Lucas (R-OK)
• Amendment #R8 offered by Ms. Bice (R-OK)
• Amendment #010 offered by Ms. Kim (R-CA)
• Amendment #063 offered by Mr. Waltz (R-FL)
• Amendment #064 offered by Mr. Waltz (R-FL)
• Amendment #R4 offered by Mr. Baird (R-IN)
• Amendment #R9 offered by Mr. Feenstra (R-IA)
• Amendment #008 offered by Ranking Member Lucas (R-OK)
• Amendment offered by Mr. Babin (R-TX)
• Amendment #020 offered by Ms. Bice (R-OK)
• Amendment #023 offered by Mr. Feenstra (R-IA)
• Amendment #021 offered by Mr. Garcia (R-CA)
• Amendment #033 offered by Mr. Gonzalez (R-OH)
• Amendment #R2 offered by Mr. Obernolte (R-CA)
• Amendment #R1 offered by Mr. Waltz (R-FL)
• Amendment #R3 offered by Mr. Weber (R-TX)

The House of Representatives has begun a whirlwind effort to pass the $3.5 trillion “human infrastructure” reconciliation bill known as the Build Back Better Act this month. Practically every committee in the House has some component of the bill, known formally as S. Con. Res. 14, the Concurrent Resolution on the Budget for Fiscal Year 2022, under its jurisdiction.

The House Committee on Natural Resources, chaired by Rep. Raul Grijalva (D-N.Mex.), was the first to handle its section, with a full-day markup last week. The committee will meet again this Thursday to vote on a few Republican amendments before final consideration of its bill.

The largest elements of the bill, dealing with health care, child care, and retirement, are being handled by the House Committee on Ways and Means, chaired by corporate ally Rep. Richard Neal (D-Mass.). They have two days of markup planned for this Thursday and Friday.

The Science Committee, Education and Labor Committee, and Small Business Committee also are conducting their markups on Thursday.

The Agriculture Committee is holding its markup on Friday.

On Thursday, September 2, 2021, at 10:00 a.m. EDT via Cisco Webex and livestreamed on the Committee’s YouTube page, the Committee on Natural Resources will meet to consider legislative proposals to comply with the reconciliation directive included in section 2002 of the Concurrent Resolution on the Budget for Fiscal Year 2022, S. Con. Res.14.

At the markup, the Committee will decide on provisions in the bill that will raise revenue and protect American taxpayers from unnecessary industry subsidies and giveaways.

The markup is expected to include:

• $3 billion to support the Civilian Climate Corps through the Department of the Interior
• $1 billion for tribal climate resilience and adaptation
• $900 million for national wildfire management
• $500 million for a unique Tribal Civilian Climate Corps
• $225 million for climate resilience and restoration
• $100 million for mitigating climate-induced weather events
• $100 million for tribal wildfire management
• $2.7 billion for overdue Indian water rights settlements
• $2.5 billion to clean up abandoned hardrock mines and redevelop them for productive use
• $2 billion for health facility construction, maintenance, and improvement in Indian Country
• $993 million for hospitals and health infrastructure in U.S. territories
• $500 million for tribal housing improvements

Download the bill text here.

With the so-called “no double-dip” rule, President Biden and 21 senators have negotiated a deal on the Build Back Better agenda that threatens several of his major climate and racial justice initiatives. The senators, all of whom are white, protected industry priorities in their deal.

At risk include programs for restoring minority neighborhoods cleaved by racially unjust highway projects, cut 96 percent, and for replacing all the lead water pipes in the nation, cut 67 percent.

In May, Biden proposed $6 trillion in public investment ($5 trillion in new spending) over ten years, in the form of the $2.3 trillion American Jobs Plan, a $1.9 trillion American Families Plan, and about $1.5 trillion more in other spending.

Biden’s proposed plan was significantly smaller than that advocated by Green New Dealers, who called for $10 trillion in spending over ten years to build a just and sustainable economy.

After months of Senate negotiations, Biden’s plan was cut down to about $4.5 trillion, broken into two legislative components – a $1 trillion ($550 billion in new spending) bipartisan “physical infrastructure” package passed by the Senate by a filibuster-proof majority, and a $3.5-trillion reconciliation package intended to pass with only Democratic votes.

The bipartisan package is a fully detailed bill, while the reconciliation package, at least publicly, remains a top-level skeleton that remains to be fleshed out.

The bipartisan package includes nearly the full amounts requested by Biden for traditional fossil-fuel-intensive infrastructure: $110 billion for roads and bridges, $25 billion for airports, and $17 billion for waterways and ports. In addition, there is $16 billion to bail out oil and gas companies to clean up their abandoned wells.

The “double-dip” deal is this: any initiative which received any monies in the bipartisan package cannot receive more in the reconciliation package. As Politico reported on June 30:

The president said something really important the other day and nobody noticed. At his press conference celebrating the bipartisan infrastructure deal, Joe Biden suggested there would be no coming back for seconds: When it comes to spending on basic physical infrastructure (for roads, bridges, public transportation, etc.), the bipartisan deal is it. There will be no using the parallel, Democrats-only reconciliation package to spend more on those things than Republicans agreed to.

Instead, Biden indicated, the reconciliation bill is exclusively for stuff that Democrats want but Republicans oppose — like spending for family care, climate change and health care.

This may seem like a minor point, but it has big implications. On the left, some progressives have argued that they would simply add to the reconciliation bill anything that wasn’t fully funded in the bipartisan bill. That’s not happening. Biden wanted $157 billion for electric vehicles. The bipartisan bill spends $15 billion. He wanted $100 billion for broadband, and he secured $65 billion. From the White House’s perspective, these issues are now resolved and the reconciliation bill can’t be used to take another crack at them.

We checked with the White House, and officials confirmed that this interpretation is correct.

On the right, some conservatives have argued that voting for the bipartisan deal is pointless because Democrats will simply take what they can get from Republicans on highway spending or airports and then get the rest in the reconciliation bill.

But what’s actually happening is that the bipartisan bill is serving as a brake on what Biden can spend on core infrastructure.

In July, the Senate’s bipartisan package whittled $2.6 billion of Biden’s planned new spending down to $550 billion. Left out completely were major components of Biden’s plan that likely will be taken up in the reconciliation package, including housing, schools, clean energy tax credits, and home and community-based care.

However, because of the “no double-dip” deal Biden and the Senate negotiators made, the following programs face massive cuts that can’t be restored unless the deal is broken:

• Reconnecting minority communities cut off by highway projects, cut 96% from $24 billion to $1 billion
• Replacing the nation’s lead pipes, cut 67% from $45 billion to $15 billion
• Investing in electric school buses, cut 87% from $20 billion to $2.5 billion
• Repairing and modernizing public transit, cut 54% from $85 billion to $39 billion
• Building electric vehicle charging stations, cut 50% from $15 billion to $7.5 billion
• Upgrading and modernizing America’s drinking water, wastewater, and stormwater systems, cut 46% from $56 billion to $30 billion
• Road safety, including “vision zero” programs to protect pedestrians, cut 45% from $20 billion to $11 billion
• Broadband infrastructure, cut 35% from $100 billion to $65 billion
• Investing in passenger and freight rail, cut 18% from $80 billion to $66 billion

This overall cut of nearly half of $441 billion in proposed spending disproportionately targets the urban and rural poor and minority “environmental justice” communities, despite the Biden administration’s stated plans of achieving justice through intentional spending. Biden’s plan was about one-third of what Green New Deal advocates have said is needed for these initiatives.

The Green New Deal Network, a coalition of over 100 organizations, is advocating for the restoration of these funds.

House Transportation Committee chair Peter DeFazio (D-Ore.) is intending to challenge the “no double-dip” deal for programs under his jurisdiction, including high-speed rail, connecting neighborhoods, and water systems.

In contrast, the all-white team of 21 U.S. Senators who crafted this deal, led by Sen. Kyrsten Sinema (D-Ariz.) and Rob Portman (R-Ohio), approved Biden’s requested spending levels for highways, airports, waterways, and major bailouts for industrial polluters responsible for chemical and fracking cleanups.

Rules Committee Print of H.R. 4502, Labor, Health and Human Services, Education, Agriculture, Rural Development, Energy and Water Development, Financial Services and General Government, Interior, Environment, Military Construction, Veterans Affairs, Transportation, and Housing and Urban Development Appropriations Act, 2022

The deadline for amendments is 5 pm.

• Division A (Labor, Health and Human Services, Education)
• Division B (H.R. 4356 – Agriculture, Rural Development) – Committee Report
• Division C (Energy and Water Development)
• Division D (H.R. 4345 – Financial Services and General Government) – Committee Report
• Division E (H.R. 4372 – Interior, Environment) – Committee Report
• Division F (H.R. 4355 – Military Construction, Veterans Affairs) – Committee Report
• Division G (Transportation, Housing, and Urban Development)

Congressional Progressive Caucus Chair Pramila Jayapal, House Transportation and Infrastructure Chair Peter DeFazio, Rep. Barbara Lee, Rep. Debbie Dingell, Rep. Juan Vargas, Rep. Melanie Stansbury, Rep. Peter Welch, Rep. Seth Moulton, Rep. Yvette Clarke, Rep. Andy Levin and other members of Congress will join Green New Deal Network organizational principals, community leaders, and allies to push for Congress to “Go Bigger to Meet the Need” on climate, jobs, and justice.

“We are concerned that a $3.5 trillion infrastructure and jobs plan will not sufficiently tackle challenges, from extreme weather disasters to access to public transit and dignified care employment. After the Senate budget committee announced its proposal on July 13, eyes have turned to the House, which is developing its own approach, with an opportunity to go bigger to ensure the level of investment meets the need.”

RSVP

Where: Union Square, (area 15 of US Capitol), 3rd Street NW b/w Constitution and Independence Avenues, Washington, DC, 89801

Other speakers include

• Natalia Salgado, Working Families Party
• Keya Chatterjee, US Climate Action Network
• Ramon Cruz, Sierra Club
• Andy Kunz, US High Speed Rail Association
• Rahna Epting, MoveOn.org
• Ebony Martin, Greenpeace
• Lauren Manus, Sunrise Movement
• Basav Sen, Climate Justice Alliance
• Tashima Hawkins, American Federation of Teachers
• Ofelia Sanchez, Central Florida Jobs with Justice

Appearing before the JP Sousa Junior High School in the Bronx, Rep. Jamaal Bowman (D-N.Y.), a lifelong educator and former middle school principal, on Thursday introduced the Green New Deal for Public Schools Act.

The ambitious new legislation — which aims to invest $1.43 trillion over 10 years in public schools and infrastructure to combat climate change — would invest in public school infrastructure by upgrading every public school building in the country, addressing historical harms and inequities by focusing support on high-need schools, and hiring and training hundreds of thousands of additional educators and support staff. If enacted, sponsors say, the legislation would fund 1.3 million jobs per year and eliminate 78 million metric tons of CO2 annually, the equivalent of taking 17 million cars off the road.

“It’s time for a revolution in public education,” said Rep. Jamaal Bowman. “As we deal with a devastating climate crisis caused by decades of unchecked corporate greed, we need to center our children and their future. The Green New Deal for Public Schools represents the level of school infrastructure investment that is urgent and necessary to heal the harm from decades of disinvestment, redlining and cycles of poverty and trauma, particularly for Black and brown children. What this comes down to is whether we’re willing to provide our kids with the resources they need to realize their brilliance and have a livable planet. Do we want to continue building a world based on militarization, incarceration, poverty, and destruction of resources? Or will we take advantage of this moment, put our kids and educators first, and treat the climate crisis as the emergency it is? This legislation is what we need to put us on the right side of history.”

The legislation is modeled on a proposal by the Climate + Community Project at the University of Pennsylvania.

The Green New Deal for Public Schools proposes $1.43 trillion in new funding over 10 years, including the following distribution of resources:

• $446 billion in Climate Capital Facilities Grants and $40 billion for a Climate Change Resiliency Program Climate Capital Facilities Grants will fully fund healthy green retrofits for the highest-need third of schools, as measured by the CDC Social Vulnerability Index, and offer a mix of grant funding and no- or low-interest loans for the middle and top thirds. Grants will cover two-thirds and one-third of retrofit costs for these schools, respectively.
• $250 billion in Resource Block Grants Resource Block Grants will fund staffing increases, expanded social service programming, and curriculum development at high-need schools. The program will allow Local Educational Agencies across the country to hire and train hundreds of thousands of additional educators and support staff, including paraprofessionals, school psychologists and counselors, and learning specialists. The funds may also be used to design locally-rooted curricula; adopt trauma-informed, culturally responsive, and restorative justice practices, to move towards a “whole child” approach to public education; and partner with community organizations to offer a range of services to schools and surrounding neighborhoods, such as after-school programs.
• $100 million for an Educational Equity Planning Grants Pilot Program Educational Equity Planning Grants will encourage neighboring Local Education Agencies to form regional consortia, which will receive funding to conduct extensive community outreach, identify the historical and current sources of educational disparities within the region, and create and implement a Regional Education Equity Plan to address those disparities. This pilot program is modeled on the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development’s Sustainable Communities Regional Planning Grants, which are designed to encourage equitable, locally-driven economic development.
• $695 billion over 10 years for Title I and IDEA (Individuals with Disabilities Education Act) increases This bill proposes quadrupling Title I funding to reach $66 billion annually to support schools and districts with students living in poverty, as well as increasing funding for IDEA Part B to reach $33 billion annually to support students with disabilities.

The Committee on Rules is likely to meet the week of July 19 to grant a rule that may provide a structured amendment process for floor consideration of H.R. 2467, the PFAS Action Act of 2021.

Any Member wishing to offer an amendment must submit a searchable electronic copy of the amendment, which should be provided by the Office of Legislative Counsel, via the Rules Committee’s website by 10:00 a.m. on Thursday, July 15, 2021.

Members should draft their amendments to the text of Rules Committee Print 117-10, which contains the text of H.R. 2467, as ordered reported by the Committee on Energy and Commerce and is available on the Rules Committee website.

Markey your calendars: Evergreen’s next Policy + Pints happy hour is coming up—and, as you might have guessed, Senator Ed Markey is joining us! We’re going to be talking about the urgent need to launch a Civilian Climate Corps. (Think of it as a justice-driven, climate-centered version of FDR’s Civilian Conservation Corps.)

In this virtual BYOB special hosted by Evergreen Action campaigns director Lena Moffitt, we’ll chat with:

• Senator Markey
• Tonya Gayle, executive director, Green City Force
• Lauren Maunus, advocacy director, Sunrise Movement

about:

• Why the CCC is such a powerful opportunity for taking on our overlapping climate and economic crises
• How overwhelmingly popular it is
• What corpsmembers would actually do in communities across the country
• And more!

Bring beer, tea, wine, kombucha—whatever!—and join us on Wednesday, July 14 at 4 pm ET / 1 pm PT.

Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.V.), the chair of the Senate energy committee, has released the text of his Energy Infrastructure Act, which will undergo committee markup tomorrow.

An analysis by Friends of the Earth finds only $410 million in funding for renewable wind, solar, geothermal and tidal energy but nearly $30 billion for non-renewable energy programs.

Even the investments in storage and energy efficiency are less than half of spending in polluting energy.

The legislation proposes to make $95 billion in infrastructure investments mainly concentrated in the energy sector. But a close look at exactly where the money is going to go reveals an undeniable bet on dirty energy from the 20th century over clean energy from the 21st. In fact, the bill authorizes $28.8 billion in nuclear, carbon capture and dirty hydrogen over only $410 million in direct authorizations for wind, solar, geothermal and tidal. That’s a ratio of dirty to renewables of over 70-to-1. Even when combining the renewable provisions with the bill’s meager storage and efficiency programs, Manchin still proposes spending twice as much on dirty than he does on clean.

Most of the language for the carbon capture text was taken from the SCALE (Storing CO2 and Lowering Emissions) Act from Sen. Christopher Coons (D-Del.).

The nuclear provisions were drawn from the American Nuclear Infrastructure Act from Sen. John Barrasso (R-Wyo.).

The fossil & polluting energy provisions include:

• $12.6 billion for carbon capture projects, including financing for carbon-dioxide pipelines used for enhanced oil recovery to extend the life of oil wells.
• $6 billion for subsidy payments to the nuclear industry to extend the lifetime of aging plants past economic viability.
• $7 billion in research and development from hydrogen programs; 95 percent of hydrogen production is from fracked gas.
• $1.9 billion in subsidies for commercial logging on public lands

On the storage and energy-efficiency side, provisions include:

• $6 billion for battery production: minerals mining, processing, manufacturing, and recycling
• $3.5 billion for the low-income energy efficiency efforts under the Weather Assistance Program

In addition, there is a further giveaway to the coal industry worth hundreds of millions of dollars in the text: a 20% cut to the Abandoned Mine Land fee paid by the coal industry.

Senior ExxonMobil lobbyist Keith McCoy revealed to a journalist posing as a corporate recruiter that Manchin holds weekly calls with Exxon. He named Coons and Barrasso as two other “crucial” allies to the oil giant’s agenda.