Providing for Consideration of H.R. Energy and Water Development and Related Agencies Appropriations Act, 2017

Floor Speech

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Mr. KILDEE. Mr. Speaker, I thank my friend for offering this amendment and for yielding to me.

I urge my colleagues to vote ``no'' on the previous question so we can immediately bring up H.R. 4479, which, as described, is the Families of Flint Act.

We all know this story. Many Members have heard me talk about it here on the floor of the House before. But in short, the city of Flint had been a struggling community already because of the loss of jobs.

Then the State of Michigan just a few years ago cut one of the three essential elements to keep that city running--State revenue sharing-- which threw the city into a financial crisis. The State's response: appoint a financial manager, an emergency manager, to take over the city government, to suspend democracy, and, essentially, to act in dictatorial form.

One of the decisions that that emergency manager made was to move the city from using Great Lakes water as its primary drinking water source to using the Flint River--a highly corrosive river--just to save money, and they did save money. The corrosion from that water, untreated, caused lead to leach into the pipes in Flint and into the homes of 100,000 people.

There are consequences to that decision. The lives of children--the lives of people in Flint--are permanently affected by that. There are 9,000 children under the age of 6 who could potentially bear scars of this poisoning for the rest of their lives and have their development affected.

Lead is a neurotoxin. It affects brain development, and its impact is permanent. But, with help, people can overcome the effects of this kind of lead exposure.

The failure by the Michigan Department of Environmental Quality and the terrible mistakes made by the emergency manager cannot be undone. The effect can't be changed.

What we can do is make it right for the people of Flint. We can prevent another exposure. The Kildee-Upton bill, which I worked on with my friend from across the aisle, Mr. Upton, would do that.

Just preventing the next Flint isn't enough. We have to make it right for the people of Flint and provide them justice.

The Families of Flint Act would do that. It would provide immediate relief in making sure that they have clean drinking water. It would provide support to get rid of those lead service lines and improve the water distribution system so that this does not happen again.

Importantly, the Families of Flint Act would also provide ongoing support for those families in Flint and give them the kind of health care they need to overcome the effect of lead exposure in the monitoring of their health.

Especially, it would provide for kids, who should have every opportunity to overcome the effect of lead exposure, by basically providing to those 9,000 children the same thing that any of us would do for our own children if they had a developmental hurdle to overcome--providing the kind of behavioral support and the kind of enrichment opportunities that many of these kids, because they are born into poverty in Flint, don't have access to. This would provide that for them to make sure that they have a chance to overcome this terrible crisis.

Justice for the people of Flint will come in many forms. Some people have resigned. Some have been fired. Some have been criminally charged. None of that does any good for the people of my hometown unless we also do what we can to restore to them the opportunity that the kids in Flint and that the families in Flint--like any other American--expect to have for their kids.

Justice comes in lots of forms. Our job in Congress is to make sure we seek justice for the people in our country. When one community, one group of folks, is struggling, facing a disaster, facing the biggest challenge that the community has ever faced, it is our duty, our job, our responsibility, to come together to help them.

The Families of Flint Act would do that by providing Federal help that would be required to have State support equal to what the Federal Government provides. Basically, rather than litigating who is at fault, we would fix the problem and realize that the people who live in Flint have a right to have their Federal Government step up for them.

Even if it were primarily the State's responsibility for what took place, they are citizens of the United States just like they are citizens of Michigan. When they face the greatest crisis that they have ever had, they have every right to expect that Congress itself would act to provide for them the relief to get through this disaster.

We have done it in other cases. There are times when we all come together as Americans. This is one of those times. Congress must act. Congress should do its job. By defeating the previous question, we can bring up the Families of Flint Act and do that.

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