To watch the interview, click here or the image above.
ON SENATOR CAPITO’S POSITION AND WHY: “I will not vote for the stimulus package. Only 9
percent of what we have in the stimulus package…goes to health-related items.
We haven’t spent a lot of money we provided in December. I think it’s just a
bloated $1 trillion extra dollars going into the economy that we really needed
to target or at least pull back.”
ON REASONS WHY DEMOCRATS ARE DOING IT ALONE: “I think it’s pent up demand by them to throw money
at their pet projects, environmental justice, and other things that really
don’t have anything to do with the emergency that this bill is supposedly
coming through with to cover the relief for COVID and the health effects of
that as well.”
ON WHY ALL SCHOOLS AREN’T OPEN: “I think that is the question that by far is the most
frustrating and deeply hurtful to many people. Think about the students that
don’t have parents that can honcho their online learning or can help them with
them with their homework every day or basically don’t want to help their
children. Those are the children that are going to fall further and further
behind. We have people working in all facets of our economy right now. Our
teachers need to get vaccinated and they need to return safely to the classroom.
I’m proud to say West Virginia K-8 is all open five days a week…some of these
students are going to lose a whole year of learning, not to say the mental
health effects of not being in the classroom, parents shaving to quit their
job. These schools should have been open and I hope they continue to open. I
know some of them are opening now but it’s still not enough.”
ON WHAT LEGISLATIVE ITEMS CONGRESS WILL CONSIDER NEXT: “The next thing we are expecting is a huge
infrastructure package. I’m part of the development of the highway in my
committee. It’s not going to be paid for and that’s the way you evade paying
for these things is pushing it into this reconciliation package where you
raised taxes and use that offset some of the expenditures in infrastructure. This
should be done together. We should be doing this through our committees. We are
asking to come back to the table and talk to us. I went back to the president
to talk about infrastructure, I believe it’s important. We do a 5-year bill
every five years, we should do another one but we should do it together. They are
bypassing any kind of buy-in from the other 50 of us, 50 senators, who happen
to be of an opposite party.”
ON IMPACT OF GOVERNING WITHOUT BIPARTISANSHIP: “I’m sorry that they picked COVID relief to be the
first package that comes up in this very partisan manner…I don’t think they’re
going to get any Republican support because of the way it was put together and
the bloated spending in there is just out of control. I think we’re going to see
more and more of this…then the American people are going to have to pay,
literally, for this, and it’s going to be tough on future generations.”
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