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PARKERSBURG -- U.S. Rep. David McKinley supported the recent infrastructure bill that was passed in Congress, but he opposes the Build Back Better legislation which failed to get the support of U.S. Senator Joe Manchin, effectively killing the bill.
There is a difference between the two pieces of legislation and people are confusing the two and putting them together when they are discussed, said McKinley, West Virginia's Republican Representative for the state's First District.
"There is so much misinformation about that," he said. "I have been exhausting myself to separate (these two bills)."
He has talked with people who have mixed up things in the two pieces of legislation and have criticized him for voting for it. He was in town Monday to talk to local officials about that and what they can expect.
The Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (H.R. 3684), which was passed last month and signed into law, allocates around $1.2 trillion nationwide in spending for roads, airports, broadband development and water/sewer investments. Around $550 billion of that is new spending added to money Congress was planning to authorize as part of its regular spending measures.
The infrastructure bill includes almost $6 billion for West Virginia including over $3.76 billion for highways and bridges in West Virginia, over $312 million for public transit, over $43 million for airports in the state, over $768 million for energy and natural resource priorities, including $700 million in abandoned mine lands funding, around $600 million for West Virginia broadband development and around $487 million for water and sewer investments, according to a summary from Manchin's office which McKinley referred to.
"There is no social spending in the infrastructure bill," McKinley said. "One hundred percent of it goes into infrastructure. It is all bricks and mortar stuff."
McKinley, Manchin, D-W.Va., and U.S. Senator Shelly Moore Capito, R-W.Va., voted in support of the infrastructure bill while Representatives Alex Mooney and Carol Miller, both R-W.Va., voted against it, according to Congress.gov.
McKinley said there are people in his own party who are distorting what is in the bill and saying there is social spending measures in the bill when there are not. He said the bill had good bipartisan support in both houses with 19 Republican Senators voting for it and 13 Republican Representatives voting for it.
Former President Donald Trump had come out against the bill and urged Republican lawmakers to vote against it.
McKinley said this was his 11th year in Congress and has campaigned on the need for an infrastructure bill since starting. His first six years were under President Barack Obama who said an infrastructure bill was needed, but it never came to a vote. Trump also campaigned on a need for an infrastructure bill and Democratic leaders said they were not going to take action on it. President Joe Biden wants an infrastructure bill and some in the Republican Party don't want to give him a victory.
"When does that stop," McKinley asked. "We need to take care of our roads and bridges so we can have economic development."
He said West Virginia has some of the worst infrastructure in the country, but there were some people who wanted him to wait when they had a Republican President and majority in the hopes of drafting a better bill. However, he was not sure how long that would take or if it would be done.
McKinley said he was going to play chess with what was being presented to find the best deal for West Virginia.
"I'm going to support West Virginia," he said of his efforts to get the bill passed. "This has nothing to do with Joe Biden. This is giving West Virginia a victory."
The infrastructure bill includes a study on the impact of electric cars on roads so they figure out a comparable tax to match what is made from the gasoline tax which helps fund road repairs, McKinley said, adding the bill will also help repair water systems in many small towns in the state and they can finish the Corridor H project near Elkins which has been in the works since 1972 among many projects..
McKinley said he was going to use all of the influence he has to make sure the social spending bill, the "Build Back Better Act" bill (H.R. 5376), did not pass which is what happened over the past weekend when Manchin said he would not vote for it.
"There was so much confusion about what was in the two bills," McKinley said, adding he was pleased with Manchin's decision.
The bill included a methane (natural gas) tax which would end up raising the price of people's heating fuel as prices are already going up, he said. Other aspect of the bill he was against was the hiring of 87,000 IRS agents, granting amnesty to people who cross the border illegally, a settlement of over $400,000 for each family that crossed the border and were separated which McKinley criticized because it would not be litigated in the courts and was ten times more than most families in West Virginia made annually and other measures that would penalize people and groups in West Virginia.
"People caught on that this was not a good bill," McKinley said. "It is now dead."
Brett Dunlap can be reached at bdunlap@newsandsentinel.com