Congressman Cárdenas’ bills Clean Commute for Kids Act and Low Income Solar Act included in the Energy and Commerce Committee’s Infrastructure Package.
Yesterday, Congressman Tony Cárdenas spoke about the Energy and Commerce Committee’s comprehensive infrastructure package called the Leading Infrastructure for Tomorrow’s America or LIFT Act. The LIFT Act includes the Clean Commute for Kids Act and the Low Income Solar Act, two bills championed by Rep. Cárdenas.
“It is our responsibility as we build for the future to provide a safe environment for everyone today, and for our children and grandchildren tomorrow,” Rep. Cárdenas said. “We have relied for too long on the previous generation’s efforts to rebuild infrastructure and have grown complacent in recent years. We need to take action now and rebuild smart, safe, energy efficient infrastructure and transportation systems for our children and grandchildren. That’s exactly what the LIFT Act seeks to do—it helps improve broadband infrastructure to make sure our students can get their homework done, ensures that infrastructure and transportation are modernized to be smart and energy efficient, improves health care physical infrastructure and telecommunications systems, and fixes our crumbling drinking water infrastructure. This bill takes tremendous strides towards a future we should have gotten to years ago.
I’m proud to share that the LIFT Act includes two bills I have introduced – the Clean Commute for Kids Act, which will help provide communities with bus fleets that use cleaner energy sources and the Low Income Solar Act, which gives everyone, not just the wealthy, access to low cost, renewable energy so that families can keep more money in their pocket while powering their homes.”
The Clean Commute for Kids Act provides funding to retrofit bus fleets with cleaner energy sources like electricity or natural gas. Nearly 25 million children ride over 500,000 predominantly diesel buses to school in the US each day, which contribute to air pollution, and importantly to children’s exposure to air pollution. This bill seeks to address these issues. The Low Income Solar Act would help families by providing grants to eligible homeowners to reduce the upfront cost of installing solar panels and provide loans to non-profit organizations and solar installation companies to develop community solar facilities for low-income families who do not have the ability to install solar panels on their roof. The LIFT Act incorporates these pieces of legislation to rebuild America through investments to combat climate change, expand broadband access, and protect public health and the environment.
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