Infrastructure, Jobs, and Energy Independence

Floor Speech

Mrs. CAPITO. I would like to thank the gentleman from Pennsylvania for having this Special Order to discuss two really important issues: America's energy supply and our transportation infrastructure. And I'm really pleased that we have a bipartisan group here. We started like this several years ago. We all kind of closed ourselves into a room, Members only, to discuss our Nation's great needs. Many of us share the same types of States, West Virginia, Pennsylvania, Indiana, where we know energy production. We know the jobs that it creates, we know how valuable it is to our country, but we also know that certain parts of our country are more reliant on certain sources of energy, particularly a State like mine, and Pennsylvania and Indiana, as well, I believe, with coal and other fossil fuels.

And so in concern of disadvantaging certain parts of our country because of our abundance of energy and our reliance on certain resources, we got together to try to solve some problems. And so H.R. 1861, I think, goes a long way. Mr. Murphy has talked a lot about what this means in terms of our reliance on foreign sources of oil, he's talked a lot about the direct translation of energy into jobs.

We share a portion of our States bordering one another where we can see the energy sector exploding around the Marcellus shale. I'm from the northern part of West Virginia that borders on the Pennsylvania area where the shale is most prevalent, and just to see the creation of not just jobs in that industry, but jobs in the car lots, jobs in the county courthouse, jobs in the local restaurants and hotels, is exciting for a downtrodden area of our country. And so we know that further exploration on our Outer Continental Shelf will explode in terms of jobs. So he has a bill.

I also have a bill out that has a little bit narrower focus, and it is H.R. 2983, and I've nicknamed it the REBAR bill. As we all know, good nicknames for bills are always catchy. My bill has the same premise, which is maximizing our energy resources in the Outer Continental Shelf to generate billions of dollars. Mine has a more narrow focus because of the 9.1 percent unemployment situation that we find ourselves in right now and in the near future. I focus mostly on, or exclusively on, really, infrastructure development in terms of roads and bridges, and then our water and inland waterways. West Virginia also borders the Ohio River. We've got aging infrastructure. Some of our locks are over 100 years old. The Inland Waterways Trust Fund cannot possibly meet the demands of the need that is apparent on our waterways. We also have large estimates of $930 billion for roads and bridges. We all know the gas tax is not going to meet this demand. We have been funding the trust fund for our highways for years. In recent years it has been to the tune of billions of dollars every year to meet the shortfall. States can't plan, companies can't hire, and equipment makers can't produce. There's all kinds of stalling that's gone on because of the uncertainty in our Highway Trust Fund.

We've set up a structure where you have a bill that lasts for 6 years so that you can plan, so that you can look at the future of all of our transportation needs. But if we don't fund that, we're not going to go anywhere, and we're not going to create the jobs that are going to be immediately created by a good and robust infrastructure bill.

The President talks about infrastructure. Many Members talk about infrastructure. But the next question doesn't get asked: How are we going to pay for this? And that's what I think is particularly creative about this bill, and I would say along the same lines as the bill that I had put in for consideration.

So I think it's something that obviously crosses party lines. The urgency is there. The win/win situation for a bill such as this is apparent on energy production, job creation, and infrastructure development. Those are the three pillars of a--I'm going to say it's a three-pronged stool. These are the three pillars that grow from this act. I think we should act on this. I think we've got critical mass in this House to be able to push something like this through.

As a member of the bipartisan energy group, I'm going to keep working with my fellow colleagues here today to see that we push this forward and that the American people understand the great importance and the great future that this will hold in terms of the growth of our country.

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