CHARLESTON — Another government shutdown may have been postponed for a few months, but U.S. Sen. Shelley Moore Capito said Thursday that work now needs to focus on long-term appropriations bills.
Speaking Thursday afternoon during a virtual briefing with reporters from her offices on Capitol Hill, Capito, R-W.Va., said the Senate needs to move on several appropriations bills that were passed earlier this year by its Appropriations Committee, on which Capito alongside U.S. Sen. Joe Manchin, D-W.Va.
The Senate Appropriations Committee passed out 12 bills, but the full Senate has only considered the three dealing with funding for military construction and veterans affairs, agriculture and the Food and Drug Administration, and transportation and housing.
Instead of Congress going through the regular order process and bringing bills to the floor, lawmakers have been keeping the government funded through short-term continuing resolutions passed nearly at the shutdown deadlines. After continuing resolutions were passed by Sept. 30 and Nov. 17, the next government shutdown deadlines are staggered, hitting in January and February.
“We did push the date of funding government to January and early February,” Capito said. “While that is a good thing, the pressure should still be on right now.”
Capito called on Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., to bring the remaining appropriation bills to the Senate floor instead of voting on appointments made by President Joe Biden.
“Sen. Schumer should have called up the appropriations bills,” Capito said. “We’re ready to consider them. We passed all of them out of the Senate committee. They are ready for the full Senate to consider. Yet, Sen. Schumer has us here all week considering judges, which – to me – is a colossal waste of our energy and our collective abilities to put our Senate stamp on spending, on priorities, on what we want to see for the next year in terms of appropriations.”
Congress is also working on a supplemental appropriation bill that would provide additional aid to Ukraine and Israel and help fund efforts in the Pacific to combat Chinese aggression. But some Democratic lawmakers are wanting to include provisions requiring Israel to meet certain requirements, while some Republicans in the U.S. House of Representatives and Capito and others want to include funding for southern border security in the final package.
“We are asking for policy changes in the immigration bills as part of the supplemental bill – which is the Ukrainian, Israel and anti-China funding – to make sure that we are addressing the national security issue at our border,” Capito said. “The numbers are sky high. The unaccountability is unbelievable. There is a human cost to all of this. … We need to change these policies so we can get better results, and that’s why we’re trying to work on a bipartisan solution.”