Virginia lawmakers voted largely along party lines on the deal to raise the nation's debt ceiling.
Conservatives are upset that House Speaker John Boehner moved a bill to raise the debt ceiling that didn’t include any Republican policy priorities.
Some rank and file Republicans were demanding the bill include changes to Obamacare, energy policy, or a proposal to increase pensions for veterans. With none of those additions and without any effort to cut spending, Virginia Republican Congressman Morgan Griffith opposed the bill even though it risked defaulting on the nation's debt.
“We can also default when our children and grandchildren have to face those issues because we’ve settled them with more debt than they can pay. So you have to have a balance. A clean debt ceiling voted doesn’t have any balance. It says, ‘Yeah, let’s just raise the credit limit.’”
Every Democrat in the commonwealth supported the bill, along with House majority leader Eric Cantor and retiring Northern Virginia Congressman Frank Wolf.