EPA Student Nondiscrimination Act

Madam Speaker, I came to Washington, D.C., 9 months ago with the hope that we would restore a little bit of common sense and a whole lot of spending control to Washington, D.C. I also came to Washington, D.C., having never heard of an eco-ambassador. Now I had heard of ambassadors and I am familiar with the environment, but I had never heard of an eco-ambassador.

Indeed, I had never heard of an eco-ambassador until just a few short weeks ago when our Environmental Protection Agency that has done so much damage to our economy, so much damage to our Kansas' Fourth Congressional District, our farmers, our manufacturers, and our families, our Environmental Protection Agency decided at this time of massive Federal deficits that we needed a new program to create eco- ambassadors--eco-ambassadors, each of which will be given $6,000 of your money, eco-ambassadors which, in exchange for that money, will come to Washington, D.C., and go back to their home places and work for 20 weeks--20 weeks for $6,000--part-time at that--for their internship program.

When you read the requirements to be eligible to receive an eco- ambassador internship position, you will be fascinated to see that it is an ideologically driven program. Students who apply must have a strong interest in environmental justice, social justice issues, and other issues relating to environmental health disparities in health, volunteer, or employment settings. This is a liberals-only policy.

The Environmental Justice internship is of course administered with your taxpayer dollars. We don't need a program like this at any time; we certainly don't need it at this time.

So I have offered a bill, H.R. 2876, the EPA Student Nondiscrimination Act. It simply says that when you apply for employment with the Federal Government, we're not going to seek to find out whether you agree with this administration's radical environmental agenda. We're not going to seek to find out if you have worked as a community organizer. All we're going to ask is that you are qualified for the position.

Now, there are many efforts and many concerns about environmental disparities across the country. I share those concerns, but our EPA and our Justice Department already have many remedies for folks who feel like they have been discriminated against. What we don't need is yet another Federal program aimed at trying to solve a problem that we know can't be solved in Washington, D.C.

I'll close with this thought: this is a small program. The total dollars expended in the scale of our massive Federal deficit are very, very small; but it is symptomatic of a place, Washington, D.C., that has become completely disconnected from America and commonsense values, the values that we all have in Kansas. We don't need eco-ambassadors. We don't need this program. And I would ask my colleagues to support my legislation to eliminate it.