Build Back Better Act

Floor Speech

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Mrs. DINGELL. Madam Speaker, I rise in strong support of the Inflation Reduction Act. This landmark package is finally on the House floor after over a year of hard work and rolling up our sleeves.

This bill will serve all Americans by bringing down energy and health costs, reversing inflation, reducing the deficit, cleaning up our environment, and sparking a new, clean energy economy. It is responsibly paid for, and middle-class families will not see any increased taxes.

This is a defining moment for tackling the climate crisis. This bold legislation represents the single largest investment in clean energy, environmental justice, and climate actions in American history, including the Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund and increased investments in both the ATVM loan program, and the Domestic Manufacturing Conversion Grant program, based on legislation I helped write.

The automotive industry is fully committed to going electric. While this legislation may pose some challenges in the short term, it will strengthen the long-term trajectory of the automotive industry, our domestic supply chains, and American manufacturing.

It is bringing jobs home, strengthening our supply chain, and reducing our dependency on foreign manufacturing.

Madam Speaker, I urge my colleagues to support this legislation.

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Mrs. DINGELL. Madam Speaker, I rise in strong support of the Inflation Reduction Act we are considering today and would like to speak specifically to the inclusion of the Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund, which is based on important legislation I authored to address the climate crisis.

The Inflation Reduction Act appropriates $27 billion to the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to finance climate specific projects that will reduce carbon emissions, which will be dispensed through the Greenhouse Gas (GHG) Reduction Fund. The GHG Reduction Fund is the product of more than 13 years of legislative effort by numerous members of the House and Senate and provides resources to fulfill the vision and mission of this legislative effort to capitalize a national climate bank that will support a swift transition to an equitable, clean-energy economy,

In the House, the GHG Reduction Fund is based on H.R. 806, the Clean Energy and Sustainability Accelerator Act. I introduced this important legislation to provide the maximum funding possible to and capitalize a single independent, non-profit national financing institution (``NNFI'')--the first ever national green bank--that would in turn make its financial and technical resources available to communities across the country. It is our hope, as the administration implements the GHG Reduction Fund, it will consider the benefits and structure of the Clean Energy and Sustainability Accelerator Act.

It is our hope the Environmental Protection Agency would make awards through the GHG Reduction Fund to capitalize a single NNFI, as intended under the Clean Energy and Sustainability Accelerator Act, and for that NNFI to use that capitalization funding to leverage private investment in amounts several times greater than the initial public investment. Once capitalized, the bill requires the entity to make direct investments into qualified projects at the national, regional, state, and local levels and, importantly, to make indirect investments into such projects by providing financial and technical assistance to an open, inclusive, and ever-expanding network of state and local nonprofit financial institutions--including existing and newly established green banks and community development finance institutions--that are committed to making investments in the products that will compose the clean power platform on which the economy must run.

The GHG Reduction Fund makes an historic investment into low income and disadvantaged communities as well, mandating that at least 40 percent of the over $20 billion be used to benefit qualified projects and the financing entities that support qualified projects within these communities, but we expect that the full investment in these communities will be far larger through leverage and investments from the remainder of the Fund.

The GHG Reduction Fund, and the American people, would benefit most and achieve its purpose most effectively through the capitalization of a single independent NNFI, as originally intended in the Clean Energy and Sustainability Accelerator Act. A single independent NNFI will not be limited by any jurisdictional boundary--no community is beyond its reach. Therefore, the NNFI approach could directly invest in qualified projects anywhere in the United States that would otherwise lack funding. In addition, the NNFI approach can indirectly invest in any community by providing the funding and technical assistance necessary to establish new financial institutions and further capitalize and strengthen existing ones. The NNFI would grow a diverse, open, and inclusive network of state and local green banks and other mission driven financing entities.

Capitalizing a single independent NNFI at scale, through the GHG Reduction Fund, would also enable public investment to be leveraged more efficiently which, in turn, drives much greater private capital investment in qualified projects, whether at the national, regional, state, or local level. And the Inflation Reduction Act requires the entity to ``retain, manage, recycle, and monetize all repayments and other revenue'' generated using the capitalization grant. We count on EPA to assure that the NNFI will be subject to the appropriate regulations and requirements that would apply to similar non-profit institutions that have been capitalized with federal or nonfederal dollars. At the same time, the relationship between EPA and the single independent nonprofit national financing institution should be designed to preserve its operational flexibility and ability to respond quickly to market conditions to execute with the speed that the climate crisis demands.

Finally, the Inflation Reduction Act sets a 180-day period for EPA to complete all these steps: establish the GHG Reduction Fund, issue a grant solicitation, award capitalization grants, and disburse the funds. These aggressive deadlines were established because the GHG Reduction Fund cannot achieve its purpose unless the full amount of funds appropriated to this program are put into use through a NNFI approach immediately. Disbursing all the funds within 180 days though a single independent NNFI, as originally intended under the Clean Energy and Sustainability Accelerator Act will ensure that we can expeditiously address the urgent threat of catastrophic climate change, in an equitable manner, on day 181. A swift disbursement of the maximum funding amount possible will allow the climate bank to leverage more private financing--thereby ensuring our public investment has a far reaching impact.

The impacts of climate change have created an emergency situation that poses a substantial danger to the health and safety of the American public, and the award and disbursement of the maximum amount of funds appropriated to the GHG Reduction Fund cannot be delayed. We recognize that the timeline will require EPA, at every step in the grant process, to evaluate approaches that can reduce the amount of time that it would otherwise take to complete that step--and it is our intention that EPA will utilize all legally-authorized strategies that are necessary to ensure the full amount of the funding is disbursed on time.

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