Source: United States Senator for West Virginia Joe Manchin
Committee adds 48 amendments to infrastructure bill on largely bipartisan basis
To watch a video of Senator Manchin’s opening remarks, please click here.
To watch the business meeting in full, please click here.
Washington, DC – Today, the U.S. Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee held a business meeting to consider and report an original bill to address and invest in America’s energy, western water, and public lands infrastructure needs. By a vote of 13-7, the Committee favorably reported out the robust infrastructure legislation after adopting 48 amendments to the bill on a bipartisan basis. Senator Joe Manchin (D-WV), Chairman of the Committee, released the following statement after voting to advance the legislation
“I’m tremendously proud of the productive, bipartisan work we accomplished today on the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee. This Committee has a long history of working productively and across the aisle. This infrastructure bill includes provisions that have enjoyed strong bipartisan support in this Committee, like the SCALE Act and the REGROW Act. It also delivers on President Biden’s American Jobs Plan in many ways and has earned the support of a wide swath of stakeholders. Today’s vote is another critical step toward finalizing our bipartisan infrastructure package, and an important reminder that we can find sensible solutions to difficult problems when we put partisanship aside and work together.”
As amended, the Energy Infrastructure Act authorizes over $100 billion to:
- Invest in the reliability and resilience of our electric grid and expand transmission capabilities
- Demonstrate the critical energy technologies
- Build out our domestic supply chains for clean energy technologies
- Invest in water infrastructure needed by western states, restore our ecosystems, and mitigate wildfire risk
- Clean up the abandoned energy infrastructure and mine lands that powered our country to greatness while also reducing methane emissions
- Fund the Energy Act of 2020
The bipartisan Energy Infrastructure Act will serve as the legislative text for key portions of the Bipartisan Infrastructure Framework, including power infrastructure, western water, resilience, and abandoned mine lands and orphan wells.
A list of amendments incorporated into the legislation – some of which were modified – can be found here.