Duckworth Pushes to Slash ICE Funding and Block GOP Cuts to Lead Removal Programs

[WASHINGTON, D.C.] - U.S. Senator Tammy Duckworth (D-IL), author of the historic bipartisan Drinking Water and Wastewater Infrastructure Law, today sought to block $125 million in Republican cuts to lead service line replacement projects by redirecting a portion of Trump's exorbitant $2 billion U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) slush fund that the agency has shown time and again it does not deserve and cannot be trusted with.

"ICE isn't making our communities safer, but protecting our children from lead poisoning actually would-so it should be common sense to redirect taxpayer dollars away from Trump's reckless, dangerous agents and toward getting the lead out of our water," said Duckworth. "It's deeply disappointing that Senate Republicans would rather enable Trump's lawless agents to terrorize our communities than help ensure our children have clean drinking water."

In addition to preserving $125 million in funding for lead service line replacement projects, Duckworth's amendment would have also redirected taxpayer money from the ICE slush fund to block $285 million in cuts to projects that reduce methane in our environment and over $350 million in cuts to projects that address pollution from abandoned coal mines.

Along with Duckworth, this amendment is cosponsored by U.S. Senators Cory Booker (D-NJ) and Chris Van Hollen (D-MD).

Duckworth worked to help pass the historic Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, which included her Drinking Water and Wastewater Infrastructure Act (DWWIA)-the most significant federal investment in water infrastructure in history that includes $15 billion for national lead pipe replacement. DWWIA, which focuses on disadvantaged communities, is helping rebuild our nation's crumbling and dangerous water infrastructure and enable communities to repair and modernize their failing wastewater systems, with many of the provisions to help low-income communities designed specifically for communities like Chicago, Cahokia Heights and East St. Louis.

As co-chair and co-founder of the Senate Environmental Justice Caucus, Duckworth has also long pushed to strengthen and defend environmental justice efforts across the country. Last year, she pushed back against the Trump Administration's multitude of misguided decisions that are making Americans sicker-including Trump efforts to limit the government's ability to protect public health from climate change, cancel nearly one billion dollars in U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) environmental justice grants, shut down all of EPA's environmental justice offices and slash over 30 EPA regulations that have helped protect our nation's public health and the environment for decades as well as eliminate all environmental justice efforts at the U.S. Department of Justice and more.

-30-