Economic Outlook of the Virgin Islands

Floor Speech

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Ms. PLASKETT. Mr. Speaker, the 2020 election brought with it tremendous opportunities for the territories, particularly, after the devastation of unprecedented natural disasters in our global pandemic.

The American Rescue Plan of 2021 offered tremendous promise of full, robust recovery for our islands. Our island governments will now receive full Federal funding for important workforce development tax credits, like the earned income tax credit, child tax credit, and the child dependent care tax credit. This will be significant relief to budget and revenue offices in the territories.

In the Virgin Islands, my home, the earned income tax credit alone accounts for almost 40 percent of our tax returns in any given year. In addition, each of the territories have received at least $500 million in State and local government fiscal aid. These funds have broad eligibility, including to provide services threatened by declining revenue; make investments in water, sewer, or broadband infrastructure; support public entities involved in transport of passengers or cargo; special purpose units of local government, or nonprofits that aid the homeless.

The Virgin Islands will also receive investments from the bold Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act that became law in November. The EPA, FAA, and the Army Corps of Engineers are agencies providing substantial support.

Much of this funding will take us far, however, aside from supplemental funds made available in the act, in the area of primary formula funds for traditional infrastructure, surface roads and highways, I am afraid the territories remain significantly underfunded or under-included.

The territories have endured severe infrastructure funding cuts since 1998, when the preexisting set-aside formula for the Territorial Highway Program funding was scrapped. Since then, the territorial share of overall Federal highway program funding has progressively declined by 50 percent. These severe cuts have negatively impacted everything from safety to emergency response, law enforcement capabilities, to commerce, to disaster relief management.

The Build Back Better Act would restore the significant equity investment in infrastructure for the territories in the House-passed bill. It contained $320 million in supplemental funding for the Territorial Highway Program in order to restore the investment in the territories to a similar share of overall Federal highway funding that they once received before 1998. We must continue to fight for those objectives.

The territories will have a hard time competing for any of the billions in funding set up in the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act for projects of national significance, or the Rural Surface Transportation Grant program because project eligibility under these new programs is mostly tied to States or projects connected to the National Highway System, which by definition, does not include the territories. That impediment, along with having sufficient private partners to allow us to ramp up, have care, capacity and competence, make it hard for us to go after the competitive grants. The territories will need assistance with vying for the competitive funding that they are eligible for, identifying those programs, and connecting those programs to projects.

The viability and sustainability of energy in the territories is of the utmost importance for the well-being of our rural communities. The territories are not connected to the national grid, and energy costs on our islands are higher than anywhere else in the country. Our geographic locations leave us vulnerable to climate change but also provide opportunities for adoption of innovative energy resources.

We need help from the Department of Energy and Agriculture, and many others, for energy efficiency, energy storage, smart grids, microgrids, as well as renewable energy technical training.

Mr. Speaker, Americans living in the territories live in areas with brownfields and are susceptible to climate change unlike other areas. We are rural-isolated and we have unemployment much higher than others. However, we have geographic strategic advantages for our country. Our young people disproportionately enter the military because they want to work. They want to be productive. We sit in a vortex of alternative energy raw resources, in a majority minority community.

As it says up here on the wall by Daniel Webster, ``Let us develop the resources of our land, call forth its powers. . . . '' I am asking my colleagues in Congress to ensure that the territories can do that through this Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act.

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