Transportation and Infrastructure:
Congressman Mooney voted against President Biden and Speaker Pelosi’s $1,200,000,000,000 NON-infrastructure bill. The bill is loaded with liberal priorities totally unrelated to infrastructure and transportation. The price tag far exceeds anything reasonable and further adds to our country’s ballooning debt. The $1.2 trillion bill will add $256 billion to the deficit over the next 10 years. Congressman Mooney supports better roads, bridges, waterways, and broadband internet for the great State of West Virginia. He does not support attaching billions of dollars of wasteful spending and NON-infrastructure spending as a part of the deal.
The non-infrastructure bill is loaded with Green New Deal-inspired policies.
National Motor Vehicle Per-Mile User Fee Pilot
Establishes a pilot program for the Vehicle Mileage Tax Program, a new tax that charges drivers per mile they drive. This will hurt Americans living in rural areas like West Virginia who are dependent on their cars to work and see family.
Gas-Powered Vehicles – Paying More
If you have a gas-powered vehicle, you’re going to be paying more for maintenance, fuel, etc. This bill subsidizes electric vehicle ownership which will disproportionately help wealthy individuals living in blue cities and make car ownership more expensive for the rest of us.
Sexual Identity & Gender Orientation Language
Includes sexual identity and gender orientation language in puzzling places—like broadband expansion. It raises questions about how this will affect internet access for religious communities who reject the Left’s confusing rules about sexual identity.
Charging and Refueling Grant Program ($2.5 billion): Authorizes $2.5 billion over five years to establish a grant program at the Department of Transportation for Alternative Fuel Corridors. The program is designed to strategically deploy publicly accessible alternative fuel vehicle charging infrastructure along designated alternative fuel corridors or in certain other locations that will be accessible to all drivers of alternative fuel vehicles.
Electric Vehicle Charging Formula Program ($5 billion): To complement the $2.5 billion for the Charging and Refueling Grant program at the Department of Transportation, the legislation appropriates $1 billion per year for five years ($5 billion total) to establish a National Electric Vehicle Formula Program at DOT to provide additional funding to states to deploy EV charging infrastructure.
Congressman Mooney has previously supported transportation funding bills subject to input from Members of the House Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure.
- Congressman Mooney voted in favor the Fixing America’s Surface Transportation Act of 2015 which reauthorized the federal highway program. This was accomplished without raising the federal gas tax. The bill included $205 billion dollars for highway projects and $48 billion for transit projects.
- Under the bill, West Virginia received $2.6 billion over the past five years for road projects. This funding is crucial to fix West Virginia’s crumbling infrastructure and to support ongoing projects like Corridor H and to widen Route 35.
- Congressman Mooney is working to ensure that West Virginia’s railroads are safe and reliable. He cosponsored H.R. 3652, the Positive Train Control Enforcement and Implementation Act that will ensure that new technology is applied to freight railcars to ensure that communities surrounding train tracks are protected.
- Congressman Mooney is cosponsor of H.R. 1062, the Pilots Bill of Rights, which will ensure that general aviation pilots are able to keep their licenses without needless bureaucratic regulations getting in the way.
- Congressman Mooney has fought for robust funding for the small watershed program which is crucial to protecting small communities from devastating floods.
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