EXCERPT:
PINGREE: "Mr. Chair, honestly, I don’t even know where to start. I’m pretty sure it’s about midnight, and — and we, this is the United States Congress, we are dealing with enormous challenges in the world. We currently have a war going on in Ukraine, with Russia, in Israel, with Hamas, and we are trying to face climate change and so many serious issues, and we’re here debating a plastic straw. Whether or not plastic straws should be used, whether or not they’re the best alternative, I mean, I understand, it’s complicated what is the best kind of straw to use, or a reusable straw, paper straw, a plastic straw, and there are issues related to this. But this is because of a mandate to reduce the amount of single-use plastic. I don’t know about you, but I have a ocean border that’s longer than any other ocean border in the United States, and one of the big challenges that we’re dealing with right now is excess amount of plastic in the ocean. We have no good recycling in this country. We have excess amount of plastics in our landfill. We have toxics that we’re dealing with every day. So, reducing our amount of single-use plastic is important. Whether or not it’s our job in Congress to decide what kind of straw should be used or exactly how these should be banned, should be implemented, I just don’t think it’s something that we should be doing at midnight when we have a lot of big problems to deal with. So, I’m just disappointed to see this amendment, to see that my colleague doesn’t want to address the big challenges that we have with single-use plastic and the difficult issues that have to be dealt with, and I just have to oppose this amendment and reserve."
(via Mediaite)