Virginia's House delegation in Washington has a long wish list in the new Congress.
Virginia lost a lot of seniority when the new Congress was seated earlier this month. So now twelve term Republican Congressman Bob Goodlatte is the commonwealth's most senior member. As chair of the Judiciary Committee he's spearheading the GOP's efforts on immigration. At a Christian Science Monitor breakfast with reporters he laid out his to do list which includes an attempt to unwind the president's move to keep some five million undocumented workers in the country.
“So we’ve got to focus our efforts first on stopping the president’s actions, second on enforcement and third on legal immigration reform.”
With Republicans now in charge of both the House and Senate, Virginia lawmakers are hoping they can force the White House to lift its moratorium on drilling off Virginia's coast. Freshman Northern Virginia Republican Congresswoman Barbara Comstock says its on the top of her agenda.
“Offshore drilling is always been something that we wanted to use that dedicated money. That was something in Virginia we passed a law for. But I know we want to look at a lot of different options in how we confined that revenue.”
Comstock expects energy policy to dominate the agenda, starting with the GOP effort to build the Keystone XL pipeline in the Midwest.
“I think it’s important for our energy independence as well as for jobs.”
But the commonwealth's newest Democrat, Don Beyer, strongly opposes the effort and predicts the White House will block the effort for the sake of the climate.
"I do think symbolically it’s very important, though, that we have to move in a very structured direction on climate change, on reducing our investment in fossil fuels, on increasing our investment in all the alternatives, including efficiency. So if nothing else, a very clear no vote on Keystone, and probably a presidential veto will say that America’s determined to be a climate change leader in the world."
Virginia Republican Congressman Rob Wittman was able to pass legislation last year to increase coordination for Chesapeake Bay cleanup between the six states and the District of Columbia. He says he wants to continue that effort.
“I want make sure, too, that we are addressing some of our natural resource issues. We got our Chesapeake Bay Accountability and Recovery Act through the last Congress. There are more things I think that we can do to refine the effort to clean up the Chesapeake Bay. So we’ll be putting some legislation in to do that, as well as extending some very valuable programs in the natural resource area like the North American Wetlands Conservation Act.”
As for Virginia military installations and contractors, Wittman says the delegation is united in protecting the states proud military tradition.
“We want to make sure, too, that we’re doing everything we can to get our nation’s defense back on track as far as properly funding it and properly directing what we need to do."
With the nation's debt at 18 trillion dollars, former economics professor and now Republican Congressman Dave Bratt says he's hoping to use his perch on the Budget Committee to call for entitlement reforms.
“But that seventy percent of the budget exhausts all revenues, all federal – takes up the entire budget by 2030. So that’s – the other side in politics will say, hey, you know, you’re threatening these programs. They’re threatened. They’re insolvent, and some of these are insolvent as of 2016, right, a year or two.”
Then there's roads, bridges and trains. Northern Virginia Democrat Gerry Connolly says even though a long term solution evaded lawmakers last year, he's hoping lawmakers can tackle it soon.
“But we’ve got to have a multi-year transportation, infrastructure bill. We’ve got to find a way to finance it and, frankly, given the low prices of gasoline right now this is a great moment for us to index for inflation (the gas tax) without doing any harm, frankly, to commuters.”
Virginia's lawmakers have a long to do list and they're optimistic at the start if this new Congress. Now we'll have to wait and see if the 114th Congress can find more common ground then the last Congress, which was the second least productive in the nation's modern history.
