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WASHINGTON, D.C. – U.S. Senator Shelley Moore Capito (R-W.Va.) today joined David Westin on Bloomberg TV’s Balance of Power to discuss the future of COVID-19 relief. Senator Capito and nine other Senate Republicans met with President Joe Biden on Monday evening to discuss their COVID-19 relief proposal.

Senator Capito also discussed how President Biden’s Executive Orders on climate will hurt communities in West Virginia, and how the state has been successful in its distribution of the COVID-19 vaccine.

HIGHLIGHTS:

NEED FOR BIPARTISANSHIP: “We had a two hour meeting with the president in the Oval Office. It was a great exchange of ideas, and we talked about more targeted reform and took a part, a little bit, his $1.9 trillion [COVID-19 relief plan]. He didn’t make any promises, he listened intently and was very well prepared. He seemed to be interested particularly in the targeting numbers of individual checks...I think that was the biggest area he signaled that he might make some adjustments.”

TARGETED STIMULUS CHECKS: “[The GOP proposal] lowered the income level in which you would be available to get a stimulus check to about $150,000 per couple. We felt like, and the statistics bear out, that you’re using this as stimulus…Do we really want to be sending tax-payer dollars to people that have really had little or no effect during this pandemic? I say no.” 

GOP COOPERATION EFFORTS: “I think that anytime you go into a negotiating position, and our mindset of the ten of us in there, we think this takes the best parts of his plan. The vaccine and testing [funding] all matching, the opioid [funding] matches him, the nutrition [funding] matches him. We made adjustments obviously on state and local [funding] and some of the unemployment [funding] and school [funding]. Let’ see where our differences are and talk from there. We’ve got some reply from the White House but it’s mostly been push back.”

DEMOCRAT’S BUDGET RECONCILIATION PLAN: “At this point, it sounds like if they can get their fifty—plus the vice president—they’re moving forward. I think that’s unfortunate because COVID relief is the one place we know, and have, gotten much bipartisan support.”

URGENCY FOR RELIEF: “One of the selling points, we thought was most powerful for going in to talk with the president—he kept stressing urgency. The quickest way to get here is a bipartisan bill where we have a lot of agreement. If you’re going to go through budget reconciliation, what you’re going to see is probably a month or six weeks, and you’ve lost that time…we’re losing time here. We could have had this—at least the parts we agree on—we could have had in a bipartisan agreement much earlier.”

WHAT HAPPENS NEXT: “We’ve still got conservations going with the White House. But, what I think we need to do is sit back down…I would say [President Biden] is committed to unity. He spoke a lot in his inauguration about how passionate he is about serving everybody and listening to all the ideas. He was certainty signaling that in the meeting we had, but I think that congressional leaders have a different way they want to do this and the way they want to push it through.” 

BIDEN’S HARMFUL EXECUTIVE ORDERS: “Let’s look at what a state like West Virginia provides and has provided for the nation. We have natural resource in coal and natural gas and we have powered this nation for over a century. We have a lot of great, hardworking people. We’re looking for stability, and we’re looking for easier transitions. We did not get that in the Obama Administration. The troubling thing to me is, it’s the same faces in the Biden administration. That signals to me that they have no interest in taking into consideration the ravage the policies wreak on places like West Virginia. But, we are transitioning in West Virginia to a more high tech economy. We’re working as hard as we can to work with research and development to keep those energy processes moving, but we cannot just drop certain people off of the ledge—like we were dropped off over the last eight years in the Obama administration—and think it’s okay. Because joblessness, depression, rise in opioid and drug addiction—it’s been really devastating for our state and tough for me to watch as a native West Virginian.”

WEST VIRIGNIA’S VACCINE SUCCESS: “You know what we’re doing in West Virginia? We’re utilizing all of our local assets. The governor has done a great job, along with the National Guard, our local pharmacies, our city mayors, our county health departments have been fantastic. The federal government laid out a plan for vaccination delivery and dispensing and we went away from that and created our own plan because we know each other best. So, we have the best vaccine distribution in the country. We’re proud of it.”

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