To watch Senator Capito’s remarks, click here or the image above.


WASHINGTON, D.C. – U.S. Senator Shelley Moore Capito (R-W.Va.), Ranking Member of the Senate Environment and Public Works (EPW) Committee, today joined a group of her colleagues to urge every senator to support a Congressional Review Act (CRA) resolution nullifying burdensome permitting regulations by the Biden administration, and to call on Democrats to release exact legislative text of their supposed agreement on permitting reform before consideration of their partisan, reckless tax-and-spending spree bill.

HIGHLIGHTS:

RED TAPE STALLING INFRASTRUCTURE EXPANSION: “We find ourselves in a situation where…we want to expand. We've got IIJA [Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act] that has all kinds of projects. We want that economic activity, and yet it's stalled. It's stalled because of the red tape of the NEPA process and other processes that are so burdensome on localities on our private developers, on our state regulators. The list goes on and on.”

ENVIRONMENTAL REVIEW DELAYS BY THE NUMBERS: “In 2020, the White House's Council on Environmental Quality (CEQ) found that average time to complete an environmental impact statement (EIS) under NEPA was four and a half years. 25% of those projects took more than six years to complete. Average time to complete a federal highway project….and I would say we have in that IIJA the One Federal Decision, which is supposed to cap the amount of time that these environmental reviews are supposed to take, yet those are taking more than seven years. Average time for the U.S. [Army] Corps of Engineers to complete an environmental impact statement: six years. Average length of a final environmental impact statement: 661 pages. And I'm sure those in Alaska and Wyoming and Ohio and West Virginia are much longer than that. It’s just basically unacceptable.”

BIDEN’S ‘BUILD BACK BETTER’ EVEN MORE LAUGHABLE IF YOU CAN’T BUILD AT ALL: “The administration came in and rolled back some of the ease of permitting that the Trump administration had put in. I think it's important to make a distinction: this is not skirting any environmental laws. This is not overlooking any kind of environmental impacts that should be considered and that we as environmentalists ourselves want to make sure are taken great care of in our states. These are just basically obstacles, whether they're legal or other obstacles, that are put in the way that really prevent these projects from going forward. You know, it used to be ‘Build Back Better.’ I guess that's not the name anymore. But I would say you can't build back better if you can't build. And that's what this administration is doing."

ON NEED TO SEE EXACT TEXT OF DEMOCRATS’ SUPPOSED PERMITTING REFORM AGREEMENT: “They're being put before us with this new bill that's come forward and been negotiated that supposedly there's a deal to have regulatory reform. I've never been I've never seen anybody here that can actually guarantee a final vote. I mean, let's get real, especially on something that's sensitive and so divisive at times as permitting reform. So, yesterday I said let's see the legislative text as to what they're going to do. Let's see how they vote on this initiative initiated by Senator Sullivan, because I think that is going to be the indicator of how serious they are to fulfill what they say is a promise that was made. Where's the trust factor here? Where is the commitment to the working men and women of this country who have great opportunities, great jobs connected with infrastructure development, and the regulatory processes that hold them up from being able to provide for their families, cope with the high inflation that we see, and move forward to modernize our country.”

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