WASHINGTON (WV News) — Sen. Shelley Moore Capito, R-W.Va., said she believes a comprehensive national infrastructure bill will be on President Joe Biden’s desk by this summer.
During a virtual call with media members Thursday morning, Capito, who serves as ranking member of the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works, said she thinks the committee can finalize legislation with bipartisan input and support by May.
“It’s the big bill that we pass every five to six years that has the formula funding for our highways and bridges,” she said. “It’s important to the modernization of our transportation sector — which obviously is safety, the health of individuals — but also having the ability to have commerce and move goods throughout this country.”
Capito said she met with Biden’s transportation secretary, Pete Buttigieg, earlier this week to discuss the bill.
“I also talked to my chairman, Sen. Tom Carper (D-Del.), who I talk to all the time, and we are aiming to get a bill out of our committee — a bipartisan bill — out in May,” she said. “I was at the White House two or three weeks ago with the president, vice president and the secretary of transportation talking about how we can do this together.”
Infrastructure has “traditionally” been an issue members of both parties can get behind, Capito said.
“We should do it together again,” she said. “I think it would prove a lot to the nation that we are dedicated to ideas from everybody and buy-in from everybody.”
The president has expressed his support for a bill with input from all stakeholders, Capito said.
“He’s committed, I think, and has said he’s committed to bipartisanship and unity,” she said. “Let’s show that we can actually do this.”
Capito also commented on the $1.9 trillion federal stimulus package, which received final approval in the House of Representatives on Wednesday without support from a single Republican lawmaker.
Capito repeatedly voiced opposition to the bill throughout its development, saying it was weighed down with provisions not directly related to the COVID-19 pandemic.
While there are elements of the bill she supports — including direct payments to citizens, extended supplemental unemployment benefits and increased funding for COVID-19 vaccines — about $1 trillion of the bill is “extra spending” Capito said.
“I’m just hearing today certain details that have come out since the bill has been passed and how it’s going to impact different people,” she said. “Quite frankly, I think bailing out pensions, bailing out states that haven’t managed their systems very well, along with other things like extraneous items like environmental justice grants and grants to fish and wildlife and other things like that, ... really are not the way we should have targeted this bill.”
Sen. Joe Manchin, D-W.Va., who supported the bill and helped craft elements of its language, recently said he thinks the bill will be the last stimulus package the federal government will need to pass in response to the COVID-19 pandemic
“Do I see another stimulus coming? Not unless I see another horrible pandemic hitting us or a health crisis that we can’t predict, I do not,” Manchin said.
