MORGANTOWN — Rep. David McKinley, R-W.Va., visited Morgantown on Tuesday and spent some time talking with The Dominion Post.
The first question was about the Trump impeachment inquiry, which is dominating the news.
“Back here, no one’s talking about that,” he said. Except for one guy at Sheetz who spoke to him Tuesday morning. The guy didn’t vote for Trump but finds the impeachment obsession a waste of time. “He said, ‘Just get things done.’”
McKinley read a list of things that aren’t getting done. At the top, renewed funding for the Highway Trust Fund, The current five-year FAST Act expires in fall 2020, and these bills take a long time to pass.
Also on the list: opioid legislation. There were seven hearings last year, this year just one. It’s not a priority for current House leadership.
He paused for an observation: “If we’re going to pursue this, we have to understand there are going to be consequences. Things aren’t going to get done.”
Back to the list: flood insurance; the miner’s pension bill, its appropriation expires in November; the Canada-Mexico trade deal; China trade negotiations; drug pricing, a bill to prevent surprise billing passed but was inserted by leadership into a poison pill bill that killed it in the Senate; funding for community health centers; the Medical device tax moratorium and the health insurance tax moratorium, which both expire at the end of the year.
“If we can walk and chew gum maybe it’s OK,” he said.
But neither of the two previous impeached presidents – Andrew Johnson and Bill Clinton – were convicted. Nixon quit before he was impeached. “People are misusing impeachment. If the outcome of an election doesn’t work out, they want to use impeachment.” Impeachment calls began before Trump was sworn in.
And conviction requires 67 votes in the Senate, which isn’t likely at this time. “We have to get back to what is really going to affect people. This thing is all politics.”
Last week, McKinley and Rep. Marcy Kaptur, D-Ohio, introduced a bill that he hopes doesn’t get derailed by impeachment. The Food Recovery Transportation Act, HR 4541, is based on legislation McKinley got passed when he was I the House of Delegates.
That legislation created a five-year program to send unused food from schools and regional jails to food banks to feed the hungry and homeless. When he left the Legislature, it wasn’t renewed.
He asked, “Why are we throwing out waste food when we’ve got so many hungry people?” A note in his release on the bill says about 40 million Americans suffer from hunger ach year, while 1.3 billion tons of food go into the trash.
Leading up to drafting HR 4541, he said, he talked about the issue with the Mountaineer Food Bank, which told him that they would need money to cover transportation of the food.
So HR 4541 established grants for food recovery organizations so they can transport the food. The grant funds would support the purchase or lease of transport vehicles and help reimburse volunteers for travel costs.
When he returns to DC next week, he said, he’ll work to get it on a committee agenda, and hope it doesn’t get lost.
McKinley serves on the House Energy and Commerce Committee and has been instrumental in preserving funding for fossil fuel research. He wrapped up his conversation with some thoughts on the transition to renewables.
If the mission is to go after CO2 emissions, he said, consider that in last 10 years, the U.S. reduced its emissions by almost 20% while China pumped out 250% more and India roughly 200% more. And those emissions don’t stay put.
“Until we have all the world embracing, all we’re doing is tearing up our economy. We can do it, sure, we’re just going to pay more.” Some estimates foresee a 300% increase in utility bills to pay for the transition.
Because renewables don’t have the baseline capacity of fossil fuels, he said, even former Obama Energy Secretary Ernie Moniz admitted we are decades away from the necessary battery storage.
An all-renewable supply, he said, would require 7,000 gigawatts of storage according to some estimates.
Right now, there are 9.7 gigawatts in the entire world.
And batteries come with a cost. Lithium comes from southern South America and requires 500,000 gallons of water to get 1 ton of lithium. Cobalt comes from the Democratic Republic of Congo, a dictatorship that’s jacking up the price.
“Let’s do more research and find out some other ways,” he said. Maybe hydrogen batteries. “NETL is going to be at the forefront of that.”
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