West Virginia congressional delegation, except Mooney, vote to avoid gov't shutdown

The bill, which passed by a vote of 336-95 in the House and 87-11 in the Senate, includes two separate deadlines for government funding.

Funding for agriculture, energy and water, military construction, Veterans Affairs, transportation and housing will expire Jan. 19, while the other aspects of government funding will expire Feb. 2.

The measure does not include additional funds for Ukraine, Israel or border security and keeps federal spending at its current levels.

Mooney, in a statement, said he opposed the bill because it doesn’t reduce spending.

“This continuing resolution continues the bloated Biden-Pelosi COVID spending levels that have accelerated inflation,” he said. “Taxpayers in West Virginia and across the country deserve to have a government that lives within its means. To stop runaway inflation, we have to get government spending under control.”

Rep. Carol Miller, R-W.Va., who voted in favor of the measure, said the “two-part” approach will give lawmakers additional time to work out a long-term deal for government spending.

“The two-part continuing resolution will allocate time for Congress to discuss, debate, and come to a consensus on funding for federal agencies,” she said in a statement.

Although she had previously said she objected to such a “laddered” CR, Sen. Shelley Moore Capito, R-W.Va., voted in favor of the measure in the Senate.

“As I have said many times, it is our responsibility to fund the government and keep it open. That is a priority,” Capito said. “To fund the government for a full year, we need to focus on passing all of our bills through regular order, which we’ve already made some progress on earlier this month.

“Time is critical to accomplish this, however, and the continuing resolution that we passed tonight allows us to do that. While I am glad we took the responsible step tonight to keep the government open, our work is far from over.”

The previous week, during a press briefing, she called the multi-deadline approach “confusing.”

“Which means Agriculture [funding] would expire on one day, and then like two weeks later, Homeland Security and then two weeks later Defense,” Capito said. “To me, that sounds very confusing. I don’t know much more about it than that, and I don’t know what the rationale behind it is.”

At the time, she said she was in favor of a normal continuing resolution that would push the funding deadline to December.

“I think our best bet is just to continue funding until December so that we could try to work out some of the things and give the speaker a chance to figure out exactly the way he thinks the House can manage this,” Capito said. “If they send a laddered approach over, they’re going to have a lot of explaining to do.”

Sen. Joe Manchin, D-W.Va., voted for the CR, but chastised his fellow lawmakers for “once again kicking the can down the road.”

“Every time we do this, we create more economic uncertainty and further jeopardize our national security,” he said.