U.S. Senator Shelley Moore Capito says she’s looking forward to the next couple of years as she takes on the chair role of the Environment and Public Works Committee.
“I’m really looking forward to having a gavel and to having a good and very productive next couple of years,” she said recently in a media briefing.
Capito says that she has learned a lot from working with Tom Carper, former chair of the committee.
She said they have worked on many different things together, including the highway bill with wastewater, a water bill, a big nuclear bill, a recycling bill and currently working on a water resources bill.
She says that working with chairman Carper taught her to make sure that bills go through the committee structure.
“I think what it taught me, is that, in order to have a success, and a success means having the president sign your bill in my view, you need to have the give and take and the open dialogue between the parties on committee and you need to work the bills through the committees,” Capito said. “You can’t bypass the committee structure.”
The committee’s main responsibility is passing legislation related to environmental air, water, fisheries, and oceanic quality, and the control and maintenance of public buildings and infrastructure.
One of the things that she is going to strive to do is make sure she has a strong relationship with U.S. Senator Sheldon Whitehouse, like she did with Carper.
“Not only will I develop a good relationship with Senator Whitehouse, who will be the ranking member there, who also spent time in West Virginia so that’s a good thing,” she said. “Hopefully we can find common ground on some of the advance nuclear, some of the carbon capture we’ve already worked together on, but also on some of the water resources, he has different issues because he’s a coastal state.”
And while she works with Senator Whitehouse in the committee, she is hoping that they can work on getting rid of some of the Environmental Protection Agency’s policy’s that were introduced during President Joe Biden’s four year-term.
“We will, also in that committee, work extremely hard to dismantle what I think has been a destructive EPA under the Biden administration,” she said. “To dismantle some of the onerous regulations that have just been piled up one after another in the environmental space.”
Along with her committee assignment, she was elected to the fourth highest GOP leadership position, Chair of the Republican Policy Committee.