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Floor Speech

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Mrs. CAPITO. Madam President, I come here and join my fellow colleagues from West Virginia and from North Dakota to offer my strong support of the resolution offered by Senator Cramer of North Dakota.

Senator Manchin has covered a lot of this, but I think I want to re- cover it because I think it is very important.

The Federal Highway Administration issued the final rule, which we are challenging today, without having the necessary legal authority from Congress. The rule will force our State departments of transportation and metropolitan planning organizations to develop and set their own declining greenhouse gas emissions targets. State DOTs and MPOs are also going to be required to meet their own targets. If they fail to meet their targets or fail to make significant progress toward them, they are required to develop new plans to ensure that they do meet their targets.

Senator Manchin described how difficult it will be for a sparsely populated and, basically, rural area, such as West Virginia, to make a measurable difference in our greenhouse emissions in our transportation sector because, you know, we are in pretty good shape as it is right now.

The expected outcome of this requirement is that it will force State DOTs and MPOs to use their highway funding for ineffective emissions reduction projects rather than on projects that will improve the safety and efficiency of roads and bridges. This restriction on the ability of State DOTs to pick the projects that address their communities' unique transportation needs is unacceptable, and it runs counter to our agreement for the Bipartisan Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act.

When we were negotiating that legislation in our committee, we specifically considered giving the Federal Highway Administration the authority to impose a greenhouse gas performance measure and associated targets, but we ultimately rejected that idea. We make the law, and we rejected putting this into our established law for very good reasons.

My colleagues and I have also warned FHWA multiple times that it really lacks the authority for this rule.

In October 2022, in response to the publication of the proposed rule, Senator Cramer and I, along with 25 of our Senate colleagues, sent a letter to FHWA stating that they did not have the authority to issue the proposed greenhouse gas rule.

We further reminded FHWA Administrator Bhatt of that lack of authority at an oversight hearing just last June.

Despite our clear communication with FHWA and the fact that this rule violates the carefully negotiated bipartisan agreement in the IIJA, Congress must once again address the Biden administration's regulatory overreach.

I would also note that it is not just Congress that has challenged the FHWA's authority to issue a greenhouse gas rule. In two separate legal actions--one in Texas and the other in Kentucky--a total of 22 States, with support from adversely impacted industries, successfully challenged this greenhouse gas rule.

While the States have prevailed over FHWA in Federal Court, I also believe that Congress has a duty to make clear when a Federal Agency has clearly--clearly--exceeded its authority.

Therefore, to ensure that there is no ambiguity whatsoever regarding FHWA's authority, I urge my colleagues to support Senator Cramer's resolution.

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