Congressman Alex Mooney of West Virginia (shown) is the son of a Cuban mother, who spent seven weeks in jail for opposing the Marxist-Leninist regime of Fidel Castro, and an Irish father, who grew up in Long Island, New York. Mooney first entered public service when he was elected to the Maryland State Senate in 1998, serving there from 1999 to 2011. In 2013, Mooney moved to Charles Town, a small town in the Eastern Panhandle of West Virginia, where he ran to represent West Virginia’s Second Congressional District in the House of Representatives.

Despite running in an open primary with no incumbent challenger, Mooney faced an uphill battle against the Republican Party establishment. Among his opponents was former U.S. International Trade Commissioner Charlotte R. Lane, the handpicked candidate of then-House Majority Leader Eric Cantor’s “Young Guns” program of the National Republican Congressional Committee. On March 27, 2002, President George W. Bush appointed Lane to the International Trade Commission, where she served from 2003 to 2011.

Mooney, on the other hand, ran as a constitutional conservative candidate, receiving the endorsement of the Gun Owners of America Political Victory Fund and backed by various local Tea Party groups. Despite his establishment challenge, Mooney won the primary on May 13, 2014, in a landslide upset. He then went on to win the general election, defeating Democratic candidate Nick Casey, former chairman of the West Virginia Democratic Party. Now, Mooney is running for reelection to the House of Representatives.

The freshman congressman has garnered an impressive 95 percent score from The New American’s “Freedom Index,” which rates the votes cast by congressmen according to their faithfulness to the Constitution. A look at his voting record and stance on various issues underscores his high performance on the “Freedom Index.”

Abortion

Deeply devoted to the sanctity of human life, Congressman Mooney has always voted in favor of pro-life legislation. Among his first key votes in the House of Representatives was his vote for the “No Taxpayer Funding for Abortion and Abortion Insurance Full Disclosure Act of 2015” (H.R. 7) on January 22, 2015. This bill would prohibit the expenditure of federal funds “for any abortion” or “for health benefits coverage that includes coverage of abortion.” The following day, in a press release statement, Mooney said the following about the bill and his vote:

We are a nation whose values are emulated around the world by people seeking freedom, justice and protection for human rights under the rule of law. That is why I am proud to support this legislation to outlaw federal funding of any abortion.

Of the bill, Mooney added, “I pray this legislation will pass and become law for the protection of the most defenseless among us.” The bill’s passage in the House coincided with the 42nd anniversary of the Supreme Court’s infamous decision in Roe v. Wade.

Unlike Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton, who recently said on NBC’s Meet the Press that “the unborn person doesn’t have constitutional rights,” Mooney has introduced legislation ensuring both the recognition and protection of such rights. On February 9, 2015, Mooney introduced the Life at Conception Act (H.R. 816), which would “implement equal protection” under the 14th Amendment for “the right to life of each born and preborn human person.”

The bill would define a human person and human being as “each and every member of the species homo sapiens at all stages of life, including the moment of fertilization, cloning, or other moment at which an individual member of the human species comes into being.” The bill is currently cosponsored in the House by 136 Republicans and one Democrat. Mooney’s Life at Conception Act is a companion to S. 2464, recently introduced by Senator Rand Paul (R-Ky.) in the Senate on January 26, 2016.

Mooney also voted for the Defund Planned Parenthood Act of 2015, which would terminate federal funding of Planned Parenthood and its clinics and affiliates for a duration of one year unless they can certify that they will not perform abortions and not provide money to any other entity that performs abortions, during the one-year moratorium. “Taxpayers should not be funding the number one provider of abortion in the country that kills a child every 90 seconds,” Mooney said in a statement. He continued, “We should direct the $540 million that goes to Planned Parenthood to the more than 13,000 health centers and hospitals around the country that provide better comprehensive women’s care.”

Coal and Energy

In June 2015, the Office of Surface Mining (OSM), a branch of the unconstitutional Department of the Interior, released an over-2,500-page set of new stream buffer zone regulations and rules for areas around mining operations. These regulations will effectively stop all mining activity within 100 feet of what the OSM designates as a stream. Because of West Virginia’s mountainous topography, through which numerous small streams run, these new OSM regulations will have detrimental repercussions to the state’s coal industry. Furthermore, Mooney explained in a statement, “the proposed new regulations are expected to prohibit mining underneath a stream, making underground coal mining very challenging.”

Coal mining produces 90 percent of the energy consumed in West Virginia. As a result of these regulations, upwards of three-quarters of the coal reserves in the Appalachian region would no longer be extractable. Consequently, these OSM regulations would lead to thousands of job losses and skyrocketing energy costs, adversely affecting the state’s poorest families the most. Any purported environmental benefits from the OSM’s regulations would be heavily outweighed by its disastrous consequences on the state’s economy and energy industry.

In anticipation of these new onerous OSM stream buffer zone regulations, Congressman Mooney introduced the Supporting Transparent Regulatory and Environmental Action in Mining (STREAM) Act (H.R. 1644) on March 26, 2015. Mooney’s STREAM legislation would delay, or possibly even prevent, the implementation of the OSM regulations affecting coal mining in West Virginia and elsewhere throughout the United States.

According to an article posted on Mooney’s congressional website, “The bill would prevent OSM from seizing duplicative regulatory jurisdiction from other agencies, namely, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, which already has similar regulatory authority under the Clean Water Act.” Of his bill, Mooney said in a press statement, “This bill protects the ability of Americans to seek prosperity from our nation’s natural bounty and is good policy for our families.”

Mooney’s STREAM bill is a win for the 1.85 million residents of West Virginia and the millions of other hardworking Americans struggling to provide for their families under the burden of government programs. On January 12, 2016, the STREAM Act passed in the House of Representatives, with a vote of 235 to 188. Seven days later, the bill was received in the Senate and referred to the Committee on Energy and Natural Resources, where it is currently pending. As STREAM awaits action in the Senate, Mooney continues fighting for liberty and West Virginian families as he also takes on Common Core.

Common Core and Education

As a father of three, Mooney is concerned  not only about the well-being of the unborn and infants, but also the educational well-being of children. On July 8, 2015, during consideration of the Student Success Act (H.R. 5), Congressman Mooney voted for an amendment that would allow states to withdraw from the disastrous Common Core State Standards or any other specific standards, if they choose, without fear of any direct or indirect penalty from the federal government.

In early December 2015, Mooney voted against the Every Student Succeeds Act (S. 1177). This bill would reauthorize the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESAA) for four years, through fiscal 2020. The Every Student Succeeds Act would also separate standardized test scores by categories such as race and income to determine if any “subgroup” is underperforming academically. In addition, the bill requires states to develop plans to help low-performing public schools. In an e-mailed statement to the Charleston Gazette-Mail, Mooney explained that he opposed the bill because it “authorizes a large federal role in education.” Mooney further elaborated, “I believe education decisions are best made by the states, local communities and parents — not the federal government.”

Federal Reserve

One of Mooney’s first acts upon being sworn in as a congressman was to cosponsor the Federal Reserve Transparency Act (H.R. 24), introduced by Congressman Thomas Massie (R-Ky.), to audit the Federal Reserve. On July 22, 2015, Mooney spoke on the floor of the House of Representatives about the need to audit the Fed. “Few institutions are as powerful and as secretive as the Federal Reserve,” Mooney said about the Fed. He further noted:

The Federal Reserve’s monetary policy impacts the prices every American pays at the grocery store, the ability of businesses to obtain the capital necessary to create new jobs, and the value of investments that the average American relies on to provide for their families, educate their children and enjoy a secure retirement.

Mooney continued, “Passage of this bill will allow the American people to finally get a better picture of the Fed’s operations, including its deals with large financial institutions and foreign central banks.” In a press release statement, Mooney said, “An entity that controls so many aspects of Americans’ lives cannot be permitted to operate in the dark; the Federal Reserve must be held accountable to the people.”

ObamaCare

In addition to wanting to expose the nation’s private central bank cabal, Mooney is committed to ending the unfolding fiasco in our nation’s healthcare known as ObamaCare. On his 2014 campaign website, Mooney declared:

I support replacing ObamaCare with commonsense, free-market health care reforms that will keep health care affordable, increases access to good health care in rural communities, and keeps government out of our most personal health care decisions.

Of his proposed free-market alternative solutions, Mooney elaborated:

Some of these reforms include allowing people to buy health insurance across state lines, expanding health savings accounts, passing commonsense tort reform, and removing the discrimination in our tax code that prohibits individuals from buying health insurance with pre-tax dollars.

As a congressman he voted for H.R. 596 to repeal most of the misnamed Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act and the healthcare-related provisions in the Health Care and Education Reconciliation Act of 2010. “The President’s behemoth healthcare law has been a proven failure,” Mooney said in a press release, upon voting for its repeal. “Obamacare has driven up overall healthcare costs for families and small businesses, caused thousands of Americans to lose their doctors, and is projected to add trillions to the national debt,” He added. Although the bill did not provide a clean repeal of the entire ObamaCare, it would have been a key steppingstone toward its abolition.

On June 23, 2015, Mooney also voted for the Protecting Seniors’ Access to Medicare Act of 2015 (H.R. 1190), which would repeal the provisions of ObamaCare providing for the Independent Payment Advisory Board (IPAB), otherwise known as the “death panel.” Mooney has lived up to his pledge to vote against Obama­Care, and if given the same opportunity again under another president, he has also committed to the healthcare law’s full repeal.

Religious Liberty

While constitutionalists such as Mooney or former Congressman Ron Paul are often criticized by their opponents for always being opposed to one government program or another, the truth is that Mooney, like Paul, is as much for individual liberty as he is against unconstitutional big government. An example of Mooney’s commitment to liberty is his introduction of H.R. 514, entitled Protecting Religious Freedom in America.

This four-page bill affirms the nation’s historic tradition of religious freedom by expressing the sense of the House of Representatives that “the United States Government should not infringe upon the ability of American citizens to act in accordance with their sincerely held religious beliefs” and that it “condemns any behavior by the States that limits the ability of individuals to express their religious beliefs.” In a press release by Congressman Mooney on November 4, 2015, he stated:

The ability to live by our religious convictions is inherent to the founding principles of our country. Unfortunately, this right is under attack today. Despite this freedom being explicitly laid out in our Constitution, we have seen federal, state, and local governments continue to violate this founding principle.

Acknowledging that the “right to free expression of religious ideas without fear of persecution is expressed in the Declaration of Independence, made into law in the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, and reiterated in many Supreme Court cases,” Mooney says about his bill, “We must fight for this right. This resolution is one way to do that. Congress must make a strong statement that attacks on religious liberty must stop.” Mooney’s religious freedom bill has also been endorsed by the Family Research Council and already is cosponsored by 15 other congressmen in the House.

Trade Deals

A final major item of note is Congressman Mooney’s opposition to President Obama’s disastrous trade agenda, which is a continuation of the failed “free trade” deals that have killed U.S. jobs and eroded U.S. sovereignty. In 2015, Mooney voted against Trade Promotion Authority (TPA), necessary to facilitate the expedited passage, or “fast track,” of the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP).

Negotiated among 12 Pacific Rim countries (Australia, Brunei, Canada, Chile, Japan, Malaysia, Mexico, New Zealand, Peru, Singapore, the United States, and Vietnam), the TPP trade agreement is an interim step toward the much broader Free Trade Area of the Asia Pacific (FTAAP), which would include all 21 member-states of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC), among which are Communist China and Russia.

Unfortunately, unlike Mooney, the majority of Congress voted in favor of surrendering their constitutional responsibility on trade policy to the executive branch, enabling President Obama to continue negotiations on the TPP with the approval of Congress.

This “fast track” authority also allows Congress to limit debate on and prohibit the addition of amendments to the TPP when it comes for a vote. It also lowers the threshold to pass agreements such as the TPP or the proposed Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP), another U.S. “free trade” agreement, with the European Union, to a simple majority (50 percent plus one) of voting congressmen. In the following statement to The New American magazine, Congressman Mooney explained his concerns about TPP and why he voted against TPA:

The Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) is a complex, multilateral trade deal that is thousands of pages in length. I am concerned how it was negotiated with little transparency by the Obama Administration. The Constitution provides Congress, not the President, with the authority to set tariffs and duties on imports into our country. I stood firm in my vote against the Trade Promotion Authority (TPA) last year which empowered the President to go around Congress and advance his radical agenda on an international scale.

From stopping ObamaTrade, ObamaCare, and job-killing OSM regulations, to passionately fighting for the rights of unborn individuals and defending religious liberty, Mooney’s first term in the House has been one of impeccable constitutional conservative credentials. His stance on these few but key issues are just the tip of the iceberg of how he is faithfully upholding his oath of office and adhering to the Constitution.

Photo of Congressman Alex Mooney: AP Images