Release from the Office of Congressman Jared Huffman:

Today, Natural Resources Committee Ranking Member Jared Huffman (D-Calif.) released the following statement after the House passed the Republican Budget Bill:

“Republicans just rammed through one of the most destructive bills in memory. The Republican Budget Bill is a big betrayal, a full-blown catastrophe for the American people.

This is what it looks like when a government turns its back on the people it’s supposed to serve. Millions of Americans will lose their healthcare and food assistance. Families will pay more on their power bills. Millions of acres of public lands will now be thrown open to reckless mining, logging, and drilling. Meanwhile, communities already reeling from wildfires, floods, and climate disasters will be abandoned, left defenseless as Republicans gut the very programs meant to protect them.

And as Republicans sabotage American clean energy, they are surrendering to China, abandoning our global leadership and sacrificing thousands of American clean energy jobs to our biggest global competitor.

And what’s worse? Republicans are proud of it. They’re celebrating a bill that steals from working families to bankroll billionaire tax breaks and handouts to fossil fuel CEOs.

As America prepares to celebrate Independence Day, Republicans are passing a Declaration of Dependence on costly, planet-wrecking fossil fuels. As families fire up the grills at Fourth of July barbecues tomorrow, the GOP will be lighting a match and torching our clean energy future.

Once again, Republicans and President Trump have made it painfully clear: when forced to choose between their billionaire donors and Americans, they’ll betray and sell us out every time.”

Background

President Trump and House Republicans are committing a staggering betrayal of the American people — gutting environmental protections, massively expanding drilling, mining and logging on our public lands, and torching America’s clean energy future to bankroll corporate polluters and billionaires.

What’s Inside This Scam of a Bill

• Opens the floodgates to reckless drilling and mining across millions of acres of public lands and along America’s coasts, including some of the most culturally and ecologically important places in the country.
  Jacks up Americans’ electricity bills by putting up roadblocks for clean energy projects while lavishing even more giveaways on polluters.
• Supercharges reckless oil, gas, and coal development while gutting safeguards for clean air and water — putting families, especially in frontline and Tribal communities, at greater risk of asthma, cancer, and toxic pollution.
• Reduces forest policy to a reckless logging free-for-all, ignoring science, weakening wildfire prevention, and putting ecosystems and communities at risk.
• Rescinds funding to protect communities from climate disasters, defunding programs that help communities build resilience to floods, fires and other climate-related disasters.