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FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

 

 

 
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE                                   
                          MAY 31, 2023

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POISON PILLS IN FISCAL RESPONSIBILITY ACT SACRIFICE ENVIRONMENTAL JUSTICE
AND COMMUNITY HEALTH; SHRINKS THE SOCIAL SAFETY NET 

Over the weekend, McCarthy and Biden released a draft bill to raise the
debt ceiling and to prevent impending government shutdown. Addressing the
debt ceiling is vital to avoid a government shutdown that could impact
millions of poor and working class Americans. The so-called  "Fiscal
Responsibility Act," however, takes harmful detours in addressing this
critical issue, by attaching poison pills that have nothing to do with the
debt ceiling, including: fast-tracking the controversial Mountain Valley
Pipeline, drastically limit community input on fossil fuel projects,
gutting bedrock environmental protections so that oil and gas pipelines and
other energy projects would be completely exempt, and targeting poor
families who depend on food assistance programs. 

In reaction to the announcement, Ozawa Bineshi Albert, Co-Executive
Director at the Climate Justice Alliance, a national nonprofit representing
89 rural and urban community-based environmental justice organizations and
supporting networks, said:

“Our communities have called upon their elected officials clearly,
loudly, and successfully to stop this dirty deal in its multiple iterations
since Senator Manchin tried to make a deal in order to pass the Inflation
Reduction Act. Our demands have not changed. We demand a public and

transparent debate of all policy proposals, that environmental justice
communities are no longer sacrificed, that our positive vision of
permitting reform [3] be the guide for any legislation, and that we ensure
a Just Transition away from fossil fuels by stopping expansion of and
investment in fossil fuel infrastructure. We need a clean debt ceiling
bill, not a bill with poison pills like a new handout to the fossil fuel
industry in the form of this so-called permitting reform. ”



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