Alex Padilla U.S. Senator for California

WASHINGTON, D.C. — Today, U.S. Senator Alex Padilla, a member of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee (EPW), joined EPW Democrats for a spotlight hearing, titled “Freezing America’s Progress,” to expose how the Trump Administration’s illegal funding terminations, freezes, and other actions to claw back Congressionally appropriated funds are threatening essential infrastructure, undermining cost-efficient clean energy projects, and killing jobs nationwide. Padilla highlighted critical projects in California and across the country that utilize bipartisan funding to promote cleaner commutes, advance stronger supply chains, strengthen American competitiveness, and create jobs.

• “We’re here today because in just over the last seven weeks — seven weeks, less than two months — the Trump Administration has decided to attack the historic funding for communities across the country that we’ve been able to fight for and approve in the last couple of sessions of Congress.”

• “It’s bipartisan funding that is intended to keep kids safe on their way to school, on the way home from school, and to protect the clean the air we breathe — and create good-paying jobs along the way. Economic growth and environmental protection are not mutually exclusive. We can and must do both.”

• “But because Donald Trump is laser focused on delivering more tax breaks for billionaires, working families are in the position of having to pay the price if they have their way.”

Padilla slammed the Trump Administration’s illegal termination of funding from the EPA’s Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund, which was set to provide $250 million for Climate United and Forum Mobility’s program to purchase 500 zero-emission drayage trucks to serve the Ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach. This investment would more than double the number of zero-emission trucks currently serving the ports and account for the largest purchase of American-made electric trucks in history, while creating good-paying jobs for American workers, laying the foundation for a secondary market for zero-emission trucking, and reducing greenhouse gas and other toxic air pollution for communities surrounding the ports.

Padilla also asked Phil Aroneanu, Chief Partnership and Strategy Officer at Climate United, about the impacts of Trump’s funding freeze on the United States’ competitiveness with China in battery production for zero-emission vehicles. Aroneanu emphasized the severe consequences of this freeze on the entire supply chain for clean heavy-duty trucks, threatening the stability of domestic battery production from one of the largest emerging heavy-duty vehicle battery manufacturers.

• PADILLA: We know that China is aggressively subsidizing infrastructure, battery production, and zero-emission vehicles. How does the termination that this Administration has called for impact our global competitiveness, particularly against China?

• ARONEANU: … Right now, because our funds are frozen, we are unable to make these purchase orders for these trucks, which has downstream effects on the supply chain, which would ultimately put some of these battery manufacturers and truck manufacturers in a tight place when it comes to competitiveness and global competitiveness. If we’re not there to provide this financing, this industry will not thrive.

The Trump Administration has also frozen the Clean School Bus Program’s rebates, which were based on Senator Padilla and Senator Raphael Warnock’s (D-Ga.) Clean Commute for Kids Act and funded by the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law. The program has supported 8,500 clean school bus projects in 1,200 districts across the country, helping improve air quality for kids, fueling domestic manufacturing, and creating good-paying jobs. Padilla underscored the importance of this funding and heard from Caley Edgerly, President and CEO of Sonny Merryman Inc., about the severe market effects for the clean school bus industry of the Trump Administration’s funding freeze.

• PADILLA: This chaos is having real consequences — yes for school districts, yes for manufacturers, yes for small businesses, but also for the kids who rely on that cleaner school bus to arrive at school and get home at the end of the day without suffering the health impacts that diesel school buses create. … How is this funding uncertainty impacting the bottom line for manufacturers, and what message does it send to other manufacturers who may be looking to get into this line of business?

• EDGERLY: … Now, my colleagues at the place I used to work, who I still do business with on an everyday basis, are taking pause and questioning where their future investments should be. So it just causes undue pause in the market of investment and perhaps pull back. [Aroneanu] talked about the scale of 500 buses and what it can do to manufacturing jobs and start to drive down the price of some initially very expensive technology. Well, that stops all that, and it breaks all the momentum that we’ve built over the last five years.

• PADILLA: … Some of the attacks I’ve heard on this program specifically is, oh, it must be sort of a coastal program, program for coastal communities, or blue states versus red states, or urban districts versus rural districts. What kind of communities have primarily benefited from this so far?

• EDGERLY: All of them. In Virginia itself, that’s where we do business, it has red states and blue states. And if we introduce electric school bus to the red state, I’ve heard stories of mechanics, greasy guys that work on the product, saying I don’t want this thing in my, I don’t want it in my area. I used to work in a coal mine. There’s a lot of attitude that comes with it, and there’s a lot of emotion. Same guy, six months later, operating the bus in central Nelson County, greenest place in Virginia, says, ‘I can’t complain. The thing just runs all day.’

Senator Padilla’s full line of questioning is available here.

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