Minority Leader Mitch McConnell tested out a new line of attack against Democrats‘ tax and spending bill, asserting that billions of taxpayer-funded grant money would be used to line the pockets of liberal nonprofit groups.
The Inflation Reduction Act of 2022, agreed to by Sen. Joe Manchin (D-WV) and Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) after months of negotiations, would provide $2.8 billion to the Environmental Protection Agency to administer environmental and climate justice block grants. The grants would be available to groups that engage in any series of activities that benefit “disadvantaged communities,” the exact definition of which would be determined by the EPA administrator.
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McConnell claimed Wednesday that the funding would “enrich far-left nonprofits,” including groups that shut down highways in protest.
“I guess the people who stand in the middle of highways during rush hour to make a protest gesture now want to receive taxpayer money for their trouble,” he said.
Under the reconciliation bill, community-based nonprofit organizations would be eligible for the grant funding, as would partnerships shared between nonprofits and tribes, local governments, and institutions of higher education.
The list of activities eligible for the grant funds is broad. A representative from McConnell’s office, when asked about the predicate for his criticism that the bill funds activism, pointed to language providing that “facilitating engagement of disadvantaged communities” in public processes, such as rulemakings, is an eligible activity.
Recipients may also use grants for community-led pollution monitoring; for “investments in low- and zero-emission and resilient technologies and related infrastructure and workforce development” to help to reduce pollution; as well as for “mitigating climate and health risks from urban heat islands,” and for reducing air pollution indoors.
Environmental justice is integral to President Joe Biden’s energy and climate agenda. In general, environmental justice is a catch-all premise that racial minorities have been more affected by the adverse effects of pollution and climate change and that Congress and executive agencies should devote more resources to those areas.
The White House’s “Justice40” environmental justice initiative is a promise to “deliver at least 40 percent of the overall benefits from Federal investments in climate and clean energy to disadvantaged communities.”
Overall, the Manchin-Schumer bill would devote more than $60 billion to environmental justice-related projects, according to a summary from Democratic leadership.
The summary isn’t an exhaustive list as to which funding priorities are considered environmental justice-related, although it considers the spending for ports and heavy-duty vehicles as environmental justice initiatives.
Environmental justice advocates have praised the reconciliation deal as an opportunity to reduce emissions and improve air pollution monitoring.
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“We are legacy communities who have been fighting hard, fighting for decades, fighting for centuries in some spaces, for the right to just breathe,” Michele Roberts, national co-coordinator at the Environmental Justice Health Alliance, said Thursday.
