U.S. Sen. Shelley Moore Capito said Thursday she is not opposed to reforms for federal entitlement programs, but she was not interested in seeing West Virginians receive cuts to the services they rely on.
Capito, R-W.Va., spoke with reporters Thursday afternoon during a phone briefing from Capitol Hill on a multitude of topics, including the budget reconciliation package being worked on by Congress, the situation at the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) Morgantown facility, and the announcement by Cleveland-Cliffs that it was backing out of a transformer manufacturing project in Weirton.
Some Republicans in the U.S. House of Representatives have proposed reducing or eliminating the 90% match for states — such as West Virginia — in the Medicaid expansion program. Republican lawmakers are trying to find cost savings to continue President Donald Trump’s 2017 tax cuts which expire at the end of the year.
“We are having active discussions on the reconciliation package,” Capito said. “It’s a two-fold exercise where basically it’s extending the tax relief from 2017. That means every single person will not have their taxes going up…We want to keep that momentum and get that momentum restarted in this economy.
“Then the other aspect of it is we have a $37 trillion debt in this country, and we spend too much,” Capito continued. “Unless we bend the curve on it, future generations are really going to suffer here. One of the ways we can do this through reconciliation is to look at the mandatory spending. And Medicaid is one of those.”
The Affordable Care Act, supported by former President Barack Obama and passed by Congress in 2010, allowed states to expand their Medicaid programs to adults under age 65 with income up to 138% of the federal poverty level, or $21,597 annual income. West Virginia signed on to the expansion program in 2013.
“I’ve talked at length to West Virginians, to the hospitals, to the nursing homes, to the state Medicaid office, to understand how fully this can impact West Virginia. I’m not interested in cutting anybody’s benefit, but I am interested in making sure that we get rid of the fraud, that we make sure that we have a work requirement, that we make sure we have accountability, and those are money savings in Medicaid.”
Attorneys representing a retired coal miner and representatives of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services were in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of West Virginia on Wednesday over a request for a preliminary injunction to block layoffs at Morgantown’s NIOSH facility.
Approximately 200 jobs would be eliminated at the Morgantown NIOSH as part of a nationwide reduction of approximately 2,400 NIOSH jobs. Capito penned a letter to HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. in April urging him to reverse course on the reduction in force (RIF) notifications. While some of the laid off employees at NIOSH were supposed to work on a temporary basis, other NIOSH employees were told they could lose their jobs by July.
“I know some people have been called back, and that was really, I think, because of my efforts with Secretary Kennedy and several phone calls with the White House to say, look, these are singular functions that keep our workers safe in certain environments or away from occupational hazards, particularly on the inhalation side,” Capito said. “We have to have this function to make sure that we’re keeping our workers safe and they’re healthy on the job.
“I think the RIF notice is still in effect until June the 2nd, but we’re still making the case here that this is a unique institution that does research in a very unique way to protect our coal miners, our firefighters, and others, and has a record of success,” Capito continued.
Capito also provided comment on the announcement Wednesday that Cleveland Cliffs was canceling a project announced last year to build an electrical distribution transformer production plant by the re-purposing of its Half Moon Warehouse in Weirton. The project was a $150 million investment by the company and expected to create 600 union jobs.
“I am exceedingly disappointed that Cleveland Cliffs pulled the plug on that project,” Capito said. “Cleveland Cliffs has not fulfilled their obligation. They obviously had an obligation with the State of West Virginia to a tune of about $50 million. I’m sure they will be returning that money. But those would have been good, solid jobs for the city of Weirton that suffered so much great job loss over the last decades. So, hopefully working with them, we can find another way.”