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Majority Leader Schumer Floor Remarks On The Need To Pass Schumer’s Clean Cars For America Proposal Through The American Jobs Plan And The Build Back Better Agenda

Washington, D.C.   Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) today spoke on the Senate floor regarding the need to accelerate the transition to zero-emission vehicles and pass Schumer’s Clean Cars for America proposal through the American Jobs Plan. Below are Senator Schumer’s remarks, which can also be viewed here:

Yesterday, at an event in Michigan, President Biden declared that “the future of the auto industry is electric.” He’s absolutely right. But even though the transition to electric vehicles has already begun, it’s progressing too slowly. China is outpacing the United States in the electric vehicle market. And the only way we’re going to meet our ambitious climate targets is to accelerate the transition to zero-emission vehicles.

That’s why I was so glad to hear President Biden get into the specifics, and talk about the many ways that government, industry, and labor can partner up to put more electric vehicles on the road, and create more jobs in the process.

At the heart of that effort is legislation called Clean Cars for America. It’s a proposal I drafted and introduced several years ago and now it has become a central component in the American Jobs Plan, and President Biden’s Build Back Better Agenda.

Through a mixture of point-of-sale incentives for consumers, charging infrastructure investments, and support for American manufacturing of electric vehicles, it would make electric vehicles affordable for all Americans and create thousands and thousands and thousands of good-paying union jobs in auto-making, construction, and battery manufacturing.

We need a large-scale effort to achieve an electric vehicle future. Clean Cars for America is the way to get there.

 

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