U.S. Sen. Shelley Moore Capito is entering the new year with a higher profile which she hopes to use to address important issues facing both the state and the nation.
Capito, R-W.Va., was selected by her colleagues in the U.S. Senate Republican caucus last month as the vice chair of the Senate Republican Conference.
The new position puts Capito on the leadership team of Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky. It also marks the first time a West Virginian was in the leadership of either party in the Senate since the late Democratic Sen. Robert C. Byrd, who served in various positions including Senate Majority Leader.
“It feels great to certainly to be mentioned as a leader, as Sen. Byrd was in his party,” Capito said Tuesday in a video call from her office on Capitol Hill. “It is a nice feather in my cap. But I think it’s more about how great it is for West Virginia to have a more powerful voice.”
The voice of Republicans in the U.S. Senate is dampened to some extent. While some predicted Republicans might retake the majority in the Senate after losing it in 2020, the GOP only holds 49 seats after the 2022 election and December run-off election in Georgia. McConnell will remain the Senate Minority Leader while U.S. Sen. Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., will remain Senate Majority Leader.
“The disappointment we as Republicans feel in not being able to take the reins of leadership in terms of the majority in the Senate is unfortunate because it means that the agenda will be set by Senator Schumer,” Capito said.
As vice chair of the Senate Republican Conference, Capito will help craft the message of the Senate Republican caucus as it tries to gain public support for their public policy positions.
“Whether it be border security, whether it be broadband deployment, whether it be safety and security of our troops, whether it be national security, you can see a lot of issues that bubbled up during the campaign are still very, very front and center,” Capito said. “Where we think the administration has fallen short or where the Senate has fallen short or where the Senate’s done good work, those are the kinds of things that we’re going to emphasize.”
Capito has always been one to keep her head down and focus on working with her colleagues on either side of the political spectrum on legislation. When it came to negotiating with President Joe Biden and the White House in 2021 on what would eventually become the $1.2 trillion Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, McConnell turned to Capito to lead those negotiations.
While those negotiations fell apart and another group of bipartisan senators took over, much of what Capito negotiated ended up in the final bill, including funding for drinking water infrastructure, transportation, and broadband.
“I always have my eye on West Virginia while negotiating in larger ways on big packages,” Capito said. “I’m really proud of the efforts and the success that we’ve had. It’s good to have a lot of effort, but it’s nice to bring it home and have the success.”
West Virginia is already benefiting from the funding in the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act. Gov. Jim Justice announced last week that $548 million in funding from the bipartisan infrastructure law would go towards improvements to state bridges. And the state Department of Economic Development is already using funding for broadband expansion projects.
In fact, West Virginia has access to more than $1 billion in broadband expansion funding, including $136 million for the state from the bipartisan infrastructure law. But Capito remains concerned about making sure that funding expands broadband to communities that are either unserved or underserved.
Capito and Sen. Jacky Rosen, D-Nev., announced Thursday they penned a letter to Jessica Rosenworcel, chairwoman of the Federal Communications Commission, raising concerns about the accuracy of the new broadband maps released by the agency in November. Capito and Rosen, who serve together on the Senate Commerce, Science, and Transportation Committee, said they are still hearing concerns from constituents, local governments, and service providers.
Capito continues to encourage West Virginia residents to visit broadbandmap.fcc.gov/home and see if the FCC maps are truly showing the level of broadband access they have in their communities. If the information isn’t accurate, residents can challenge the broadband availability so that the FCC can improve their maps.
“The pandemic really showed us what good connectivity can do and the advantages that you can have, whether it’s health, whether it’s economics and telecommuting, or whether it’s education,” Capito said. “The infrastructure bill has enormous amounts of money in it…but before that money can go out, we have to have accurate maps.”
“What we’ve seen in the past is we’re just bumping up service in certain places and still have these broad areas and residences and businesses that are unconnected or under-connected,” Capito continued. “It’s a process that we’re going through now, but it’s a critical one because it will make sure that we do get that connectivity. And then I think the sky’s the limit for us in terms of being able to grow.”
On the national stage, Capito remains concerned about growing humanitarian crises on the U.S. southern border, which has seen record-breaking numbers of migrants crossing into the country illegally. The U.S. Supreme Court issued a stay earlier this week that keeps Title 42 in place. The Trump-era order allows board officials to skip the asylum process and deport people who illegally cross the border. But the Biden administration would like to end the order.
Capito said the number of migrants crossing the board has jumped substantially since Biden took office, yet the White House has taken no actions on stemming the flow of people.
“Let’s focus on the border. It’s a mess,” Capito said. “It is a humanitarian crisis that’s been exacerbated by, really, the Biden administration has no policy of deterrents. It’s open borders. And you can see the numbers are staggering.”
Despite its collapse as the federal funding omnibus spending bill was being negotiated, Capito still sees some hope for permitting reform for oil and natural gas projects, including getting the Mountain Valley Pipeline to the finish line.
“There is bipartisan interest in both of those,” Capito said. “We have the interest, it’s just whether we have the will.”
Both Capito and Sen. Joe Manchin, D-W.Va., offered differing permitting reform language. Capito’s bill was never taken up, and Manchin’s efforts to get his language into a continuing resolution and earlier this month in the National Defense Authorization Act all failed when progressive Democrats and some Republicans said no.
Capito also is interested in Congress talking about the growing issue of fentanyl, a synthetic opioid more powerful than morphine used to treat extreme pain. Drug traffickers are making their own fentanyl, illegally transporting it into the U.S. and cutting other drugs with the potent opioid, causing increases in drug overdoses and deaths.
Capito also is interested in providing more funding for Alzheimer’s research. Capito’s mother Shelley Moore, the late wife of former Gov. Arch Moore, battled Alzheimer’s in her later years.
“I have a great passion and interest in research and health in terms of Alzheimer’s research,” Capito said. “We’re doing great things in West Virginia, particularly up at West Virginia University. I think this has great promise for people who have dementia and Alzheimer’s, but also Parkinson’s and other neurological diseases.”