CHARLESTON — After more than eight months of negotiations and more than two months of being held up in the U.S. House of Representatives, U.S. Sen. Joe Manchin said the $1.2 trillion Bipartisan Infrastructure Framework will have historic implications for West Virginia.

Manchin, D-W.Va., joined a virtual briefing Monday morning with members of the West Virginia Senate’s Democratic caucus to praise the passage Friday night of the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, also known as the Bipartisan Infrastructure Framework (BIF), by the House.

“This is one of the most important pieces of legislation that we’ve done,” Manchin said. “Bipartisan infrastructure has been tried for the last 30 years and no President has been able to get it done. It’s unbelievable.”

Manchin was part of the bipartisan group of U.S. Senators who negotiated the final version of the BIF that passed the Senate 69-30 in August, based in part on President Joe Biden’s American Jobs Plan and earlier negotiations with Senate Republicans, including U.S. Sen. Shelley Moore Capito, R-W.Va. The bill passed the House 228-206 with 13 Republicans, including 1st District Congressman David McKinley, voting for the bill.

“My colleague Shelley Capito was with us on that, working with us,” Manchin said. “We all worked together, and we put a piece of legislation together working with our Republican friends. We wish we could have done a lot more, but we did more than it’s ever been done in history.”

“Seeing the final bipartisan product head to his desk today is exciting,” Capito said in a statement Friday. “This bill is further proof that this bipartisan process leads to better, lasting policy that will benefit the American people for generations to come.”

The package of hard infrastructure projects represents $1.2 trillion over eight years, with $550 billion in new infrastructure spending. Traditional infrastructure projects a multitude of transportation, water and wastewater, clean energy and broadband expansion projects.

The BIF includes $65 billion for broadband expansion; $110 billion for roads, bridges, and major transportation projects; $65 billion for power grid resiliency, domestic supply chain incentives for clean energy technology, funding for carbon capture and other technologies, and energy demonstration projects; $47.2 billion for critical infrastructure resiliency, cybersecurity, climate change impacts (flooding, wild fires, drought, etc.)

The bill also includes $66 billion for passenger and freight rail, $11 billion for highway and pedestrian safety, $39.3 billion to deal with a backlog in public transportation repair projects, $25 billion for airports, and $55 billion for water infrastructure projects.

According to Manchin, West Virginia is expected to receive as much as $6 billion from BIF over the next five years. The state will receive a minimum of $100 million for broadband expansion projects across West Virginia and unserved parts of the state, and new funding for the Affordability Connectivity Benefit will open up eligibility for 543,000 West Virginian to help subsidize internet access.

Changes to the highway aid formula could send West Virginia as much as $3 billion for highways projects and $506 million for bridge replacement and repairs over the next five years. That doesn’t count approximately $196 million for public transportation projects, $46 million to expand electric vehicle charging stations and opportunities to apply for $2.5 billion in grant funding for electric vehicle charging.

West Virginia could also benefit from billions in funding for environmental mitigation projects, such as $500 million for cleaning up abandoned mine lands and $200 million for capping orphaned natural gas wells.

“We’ve been fighting for these infrastructure improvements for years,” said state Senate Minority Leader Stephen Baldwin, D-Greenbrier. “Unfortunately, we haven’t had the funds. Now we are going to have significant funds to rebuild West Virginia. We’re so excited about it.”

McKinley was the only member of West Virginia’s Republican delegation in the U.S. House to vote for BIF, with 2nd District Congressman Alex Mooney and 3rd District Congresswoman Carol Miller voting no.

“… Instead of playing politics, I put America and West Virginia first,” McKinley said in a statement after Friday’s vote. “The bipartisan plan that passed the House will help transform West Virginia, resulting in better roads, reliable internet across our state, and needed upgrades to water systems that were built a century ago.”

Miller said her no vote was due to the BIF being part of the debate on the $1.75 trillion Build Back Better social spending framework still being negotiated in the House. The BIF was held by the House since August in part due to House Democratic progressives refusing to vote for it until the Build Back Better plan was passed.

Mooney, who will be challenging McKinley in the 2022 Republican primary for the new northern 2nd Congressional District, claims BIF included priorities outside of hard infrastructure and was “wasteful spending.”

“It is full of liberal priorities totally unrelated to infrastructure and transportation,” Mooney said Friday. “The price tag far exceeds anything reasonable and further adds to our country’s ballooning debt … I do not support attaching billions of dollars of wasteful spending and tax hikes as a part of the deal.”

The Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act is paid for by recouping fraudulent unemployment insurance benefits, unused COVID-19 relief dollars and unused pandemic unemployment funds, delaying Medicare Part D rebates, miscellaneous fees, and an estimated $56 billion in economic growth due to a return in investment in the bill’s infrastructure projects.

“The people of West Virginia need to thank David McKinley for having the courage to do what he needed to do for our state,” Manchin said. “You tell me an area of the state, whether it be in Mooney or Miller’s area, that doesn’t need roads, bridges, broadband … doesn’t have abandoned mine land property that needs to be reclaimed, that doesn’t have wells that need to be capped … And you tell me another opportunity they’re going to have like this. I don’t know how you can explain that.

“For Mooney to try to use this against David McKinley, I think that’s going to reverse and hurt (Mooney) so bad when people know what he voted against in his area,” Manchin continued. “David McKinley voted for all of West Virginia, including his district.”

(Adams can be contacted at sadams@newsandsentinel.com)