To watch Senator Capito’s remarks, click here or on the image above.
WASHINGTON, D.C. – Today, U.S. Senator Shelley Moore Capito (R-W.Va.), Vice Chairman of the Senate Republican Conference and Ranking Member of the Senate Environment and Public Works (EPW) Committee, delivered remarks at the weekly Senate Republican Leadership press conference on the need for permitting reform, and the negative impact that red-tape delays are creating across the country.
Earlier today, the EPW Committee held the Senate’s first hearing to discuss the need for meaningful reforms to America’s permitting and environmental review processes, an issue Senator Capito has championed in order to make it easier to build and complete transportation, infrastructure, and energy projects of all kinds. To watch Senator Capito’s opening remarks, click here.
HIGHLIGHTS:
BUILDING BLOCKED: “Now, we've talked a lot about how important permitting reform is to energy, to the cost of energy, to consumers, to folks who have jobs in that in that arena, but it's more than just energy projects. It’s manufacturing projects, its water projects, its broadband projects. All of these projects have to be permitted before they're allowed to be built. So, the administration has touted their ‘Build Back Better,’ but you can't build back anything better, because you can't build it….everything from renewables, to the MVP pipeline in West Virginia, to other projects that we've heard about today.”
WHAT DOES REAL REFORM LOOK LIKE?: “So, what does reform look like to me today in our hearing? We started off with this – first of all, in my view, I think it needs to be everything, all-the-above, renewables, fossil, anything. It has to be a fair process that treats every project fairly. Secondly, we need deadlines. We know, time after time, these agencies just blow through their deadlines with no penalties, no enforcement measures, and to try to slow bleed certain projects to come to a screeching halt. You know, we're supposed to be building, selling electric vehicles that have chips in them. In order to get the chips, you've got to have the mines. In order to have the mines for the critical minerals, you have to have the permit. So there's a really big disconnect here. So you have to have permits on deadline. Judicial review is another thing that is a total stall-tactic by the folks that are against projects moving through these states.”
IMPORTANCE OF REFORM: “All we're doing is making sure that the process is done in a timeline that could actually see something being done. When the process takes longer than the actual building process, that tells you something right there. You know, community involvement, all of our communities are going to have involvement and want to have involvement in what's being built in their community, the impacts they will be having. We all agree on that. So, we did have some areas of agreement between the Republicans and Democrats, we’re devoted to this…I think this is absolutely critical to the health, to the economy, to the environment, to everything that impacts our everyday lives.”
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