Capito, GOP touts year-long effort to fight Biden's 'radical green agenda'

Dec. 28—As the year comes to a close, U.S. Senator Shelley Moore Capito, R-W.Va., has released a new report highlighting the efforts of Senate Republicans to counter what she calls President Joe Biden's "radical green agenda."

Capito, ranking member of the Senate Environment and Public Works (EPW) Committee, has released a 2023 year in review report of EPW Republicans' accomplishments and activities titled, "Countering Biden's Radical Green Agenda with Rigorous Oversight & Real Solutions."

The new report focuses on the efforts by Republican lawmakers to fight the administration's "overreaching and harmful energy and environmental regulations," according to Capito. It also highlights ongoing efforts by the Republicans on the Environment and Public Works Committee to deliver what Capito calls achievable solutions that protect the environment while strengthening American energy.

"This year, President Biden's number one target for relentless regulation and executive overreach was American energy, mandating an unrealistic climate agenda that proved costly to American families and harmful to nearly every sector of the economy," Capito said in announcing the EPW report. "In 2023, EPW Republicans set out to expose the negative impacts of these policies, conduct crucial oversight, and importantly, offer logical, bipartisan energy and environmental alternatives that — unlike the proposals of climate activists in the Biden administration — are actually based in reality."

Capito said the climate agenda being pushed by Biden has been rejected multiple times by both Republicans and some Democrats, the U.S. Supreme Court and voters across the country, particularly in energy-producing states like West Virginia.

The EPW Committee has oversight authority for multiple federal agencies, including the Environmental Protection Agency, Nuclear Regulatory Commission, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, the Council on Environmental Quality, and the Federal Highway Administration. In addition to Capito, members of the committee include Senator Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., Senator Kevin Cramer, R-N.D., Senator Cynthia Lummis, R-Wyoming, Senator Markwayne Mullin R-Okla., Senator Pete Ricketts, R-Neb., Senator John Boozman, R-Ariz., Senator Roger Wicker, R-Miss., and Senator Dan Sullivan, R-Ark.

According to the report, to make building in America easier and faster, Republican members of the EPW Committee continue to fight for legislative reform of federal permitting and the environmental review processes. The long-delayed Mountain Valley Pipeline (MVP) project for West Virginia and neighboring Virginia was one such example of a local project impacted by the federal permitting process.

EPW Republicans enabled the final construction of the Mountain Valley Pipeline through language in the debt ceiling legislation, according to the new report. When the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals issued a stay on the pipeline's construction, Capito filed an amicus brief with Republican House members to support the completion of the MVP. The U.S. Supreme Court later agreed in an unanimous vote to allow the Mountain Valley Pipeline project to resume construction.

According to the report, EPW Republicans also secured the bipartisan Senate passage of a joint resolution of disapproval to overturn the repeal of the 2020 Navigable Waters Protection Rule by a vote of 53-43. In issuing the repeal, the Biden administration aimed to expand federal jurisdiction over lands and waters. But this approach created regulatory confusion and led to additional burdensome red tape for the nation's agricultural, construction and energy industries, the report added. In May, the U.S. Supreme Court agreed in a 9-0 decision in Sackett v. EPA that the federal government has narrow authority to regulate WOTUS (Waters of the United States rule), which was consistent with a congressional amicus brief led by Capito and 45 other senators, as well as 155 House members.

— Contact Charles Owens at cowens@bdtonline.com

— Contact Charles Owens at cowens@bdtonline.com. Follow him @BDTOwens