mrs. capito: thank you, mr. president. also join in positive comments to say it's two issues that i care deeply about and certainly hit my state which is the p-fas issue and also small and disadvantaged communities that helps with the safe drinking water amendment. thank you. the presiding officer: the question is on the amendment. all in favor say aye. opposed say no. the amendment is agreed to. under the previous order, there will now be two minutes of debate equally divided prior to a vote in relation to amendment numbered 1469. mr. kennedy: mr. president. the presiding officer: the senator from louisiana. mr. kennedy: mr. president, i want to talk briefly about boil water advisories. they are more than just frustrating. they are more than just inconvenient. they can be dangerous. and i don't know about your community, mr. president, or my colleagues' communities, but they have been happening more and more frequently in louisiana since 2005, we have had 9,661 boil water advisories. we had 1,600 of them last year alone.

mrs. capito: thank you, mr. president. i ask that we vitiate the quorum call. the presiding officer: without objection. mrs. capito: thank you, mr. president. i rise today in opposition to the resolution of disapproval on the trump e.p.a.'s methane policy rule. this resolution we have in front of us today is nothing more than a political posturing, i believe. ironically, the democrats are targeting natural gas for blame when methane emissions have actually fallen. according to e.p.a. data, natural gas systems in the u.s. reduce their overall methane emissions by nearly 16% between 1990 and 2019. it is widely recognized that the shale gas boom led to significant greenhouse gas emission reductions over our power sector. some climate change advocates, including those in washington, want to ban oil and gas production and use, and they oppose maintenance and expansion of our pipelines in this country. the c.r.a. is part of that effort, i believe. the c.r.a. is part of a plan to double down on an industry that the biden administ

some republican senators like senator shelley moore capito, a slimmed down infrastructure package, would you get behind that or more so along those lines? mr. scalise: here's where details really matter. there are few ideas being worked on by republicans and democrats in the hundreds of billions of range, not the trillions of dollars. the most important part are the plans i like and support would be plans that are fully paid for without new taxes. what i mean by that is reprioritizing existing federal dollars. there are some good plans that do that. once you start getting into deficit spending and especially raising taxes on american jobs, making our country less competitive, and really hurting our middle class that was starting to come back, that's not something that's good for the country. it's frankly not what infrastructure is about. so if there is a plan where we can come together on things that actually make sense to build more roads and bridges and broadband and help our infrastructure without raising taxes, that's something i'm very open to. alayna: i want to give you an opportunity here, congressman, because i know a lot of democr

mrs. capito: thank you, mr. speaker. we are about to vote cloture on janet mccabe, the number two at the e.p.a. i vehemently oppose her nomination. she is the architect of the clean power plan that basically wracked my economy in west virginia. she worked and she has not backed down from that in her testimony. she's very supportive of that plan and, even more, her boss at the e.p.a. at the time was gina mccarthy. guess where she is now? in the white house. she again will be janet mccabe's boss in the white house, dictating from there. during her time at the e.p.a., she wouldn't listen, she wouldn't come to west virginia and basically showed very little interest in what happens to the people most deeply affect by the policy that she put forward. given her past actions and present statements, i cannot support someone who would work to destroy a state's economy such sasse ours was destroyed and our communities and their livelihoods. thank you. mr. carper: mr. president? the presiding officer: the senator from delaware. mr.

mrs. capito: thank you. thank you, mr. president. i rise today to urge my colleagues to vote for this motion to proceed to the bipartisan drinking water and wastewater act of 2001, otherwise known as dwaa. as the ranking member of the environment and public works committee, i've been working closely with chairman carper and senators duckworth, lummis, cardin, and cramer, to craft meaningful legislation that addresses our country's aging drinking water and wastewater systems. every city in town can tell you all about it. this bill authorizes more than $35 billion for water resources development projects across the country, with a focus on upgrading aging infrastructure, addressing the emerging threats of extreme weather events, including those resulting from climate change and cybersecurity vulnerabilities. this also includes measures to invest in innovative technologies and it provides assistance to marginalized communities. all of these things will help our communities keep their water safe and clean. something i'm particularly prou

mr. president, that we shouldn't reach bipartisan agreement on another substantial piece of infrastructure legislation. senator capito and other republicans will be releasing a republican proposal today that will indicate a lot of bipartisan infrastructure priorities. i hope after she releases this proposal, democrats and republicans will be able to sit down and engage in serious negotiation on our two plans. mr. president, our founders established a democratic republic instead of a pure democracy because they wanted to balance majority rule with protection for minority rights. they knew that majorities could be tyrants and so they wove protection for minority rights into our system of government. and the senate, mr. president, was one of those protections. that's why we should be preserving rules like the filibuster which ensures that the minority party and the many americans it represents has a voice in legislation. so it's always important that the minority party's voice be heard and the senate engage in bipartisan negotiation and discussion. but it should be especially obvious that into 50-50 senate, any major le