Capito Expecting To Be Busy Following Senate Recess
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U.S. Sen. Shelley Moore Capito has spent her recess crisscrossing West Virginia, looking at the progress that has been made in many of its corners. The West Virginia Republican was at the Mitchell Power Plant in Marshall County on Tuesday and made a stop in Morgantown on Wednesday to witness the ribbon cutting for West Virginia University’s newly renovated School of Dentistry.
Yet when she returns to Washington, D.C., she expects to have a busy schedule waiting for her, one she hopes will soon include reform of the federal environmental review and permitting process.
During her Marshall County stop, Capito said she has been working “day and night” on permitting reform. She has been working with Democratic senators like Rhode Island Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse and New Mexico Sen. Martin Heinrich to make that a reality.
“In order to build a road, a communications tower, a manufacturing facility, you have to go through the correct permitting to preserve clean air and clean water,” she said. “We want that, but our permitting processes are so long, so cumbersome, so filled with red tape that we want permitting reform for everybody that will shorten the cycle, that it will make more sense, that has more predictability.”
Another bill working its way through the U.S. Senate is the Protect College Sports Act, an attempt to tame the landscape of college athletics in terms of transfers and name, image and likeness issues. The bill, which is scheduled for a full Senate vote following summer recess, includes aspects like a hard cap on revenue sharing, a $22.5 million retention fund that can increase by as much as $5 million through a dollar-for-dollar match on NIL spending for women’s and Olympic sports and a cap on the size of college sports conferences, limiting each conference to 19 teams.
“It’s all in the courts now,” Capito said of the current college athletics landscape, “and every time it’s different, depending on what court you’re in. … What we need is a floor, a federal floor. That’s what everybody wants.
“We’ve talked to (athletic directors) and presidents of universities,” she added. “They believe this bill is the key, that it’s the answer.”
Capito also said she was keeping an eye on the situation with the USS Abraham Lincoln. The aircraft carrier has been deployed for more than 260 days and has not docked for a port call during that time. That has broken the United States Navy’s record for longest deployment without a stop. Reports have alleged that crew members on the Abraham Lincoln are suffering from declining mental health and supply shortages.
Capito said she has not heard from any parents of those who currently are on the Abraham Lincoln, but the situation has her attention.
“I think anytime we’re asking our young men and women to serve … I understand they’ve been on the carrier for a much longer engagement than what they might have anticipated,” she said. “That’s caused a lot of strains and there are supply chain issues. We need to make sure they have the best at all times, and that includes their quality of life. And it looks like there are some problems.”