I’ve had races over the years where my opponents and their left-wing Washington allies have attempted to distort my record and mislead voters. After all, this is politics, and as they say, “politics ain’t beanbag.” Another quote I remember hearing was “politics is a contact sport.” I googled that phrase to see who said it, and it was me! No kidding. Try googling it. I thought I had heard it from someone else, but what the heck.
But I have to say, this election cycle has been particularly notable in the distorted ads department. My opponent, Aftab Pureval, and his liberal allies at the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC), have been taking turns attacking me with distortions and things which just aren’t true. Let me give you a few examples in their recent ads against me.
They’re attacking me for allegedly voting to raise the pay for Members of Congress. Not true. Here’s the truth. This is my twenty-second year serving as a Congressman. For about the first ten years of my service, Congress got an automatic cost of living increase each year, just as all other federal workers did. Every year some Member of Congress would offer an amendment to stop the cost of living increase, and every time I voted FOR the amendment to STOP the increase. After about ten years, Congress voted to freeze our pay, and I voted in favor of this. And there has been no cost of living increase for the last twelve years or so.
So how do the Democrats now claim that I’ve somehow voted for a pay hike for Members of Congress? Well, most years there is a bill passed at the end of the year called a Continuing Resolution (CR) which funds thousands of federal programs and expenditures, and costs hundreds of billions of dollars. Some years the spending is excessive, and I vote no on The CR. Other years the spending seems within reason, and I vote yes. Well, there’s a small clause in the thousands of pages CR, which says congressional pay will not increase. What the devious, deceptive Democrats decided to do, is say that those conservative Members like myself, who have voted against the CR because it spends too much, are somehow voting for a pay hike. That’s pure baloney. But it doesn’t stop them from running their deceptive ads.
Another deceptive attack on me relates to congressional travel. The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee alleges that I vacation on the taxpayer dime. Yeah, to such garden spots as Afghanistan, Iraq, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Yemen, and to refugee camps in Darfur, Sudan. As a senior member of the Foreign Affairs Committee, particularly as I’ve been the Chairman of the Subcommittee on the Middle East, as well as Chairman of the Subcommittee on Asia and the Pacific, one of my primary responsibilities is travelling to other countries and overseeing, fact-finding, and analyzing how State Department tax dollars (over $50 Billion annually) are being spent there. Not a week goes by that I don’t meet in Washington with my counterparts from other nations: from the Knesset in Israel, from the National Diet in Japan, from the Legislative Yuan in Taiwan, from the Bundestag in Germany, and so on. We meet and discuss issues of mutual concern in the US, and are expected to reciprocate in their countries. That’s how foreign diplomacy works. It’s in the best interest of our nation, as well as theirs.
In Afghanistan
In Iraq
Another deceptive ad by the left-wing attack machine is that I’ve somehow done something wrong by my campaign’s utilizing my son-in-law’s web design business to handle my campaign website. Again, a totally bogus smear. There IS a prohibition on hiring a relative in one’s OFFICIAL office. But that’s not the case here. My son-in-law’s business, Right Turn Design, handles my campaign’s database management, cybersecurity, online fundraising, yard sign lists, volunteer lists, YouTube page, my weekly blog, and has completely redesigned and modernized the website a number of times over the last eight years. There is absolutely nothing improper, illegal, or unethical about this, and dozens of other Members of Congress have similar arrangements. If it was somehow inappropriate, I wouldn’t do it. This whole flap is merely an attempt by The Left to distract from my opponent, Aftab Pureval’s, serious legal and ethical improprieties for which he is currently under investigation, and could possibly go to jail.
And perhaps the most fallacious attack by my opponent and his liberal allies is that I allegedly haven’t done anything in my twenty-two years in Congress. (This coming from a guy who claims he “was a federal prosecutor” when he was actually nothing more than an unpaid intern, said he was going to end cronyism at the Clerk’s Office and instead fired non-political single-mothers and hired the son-in-law of the Democratic Party Chairman, and didn’t even move into our congressional district until the day before he announced his candidacy for Congress.) Well, here’s a short list of actual accomplishments: As Chairman of the Judiciary’s Subcommittee on the Constitution, I oversaw the reauthorization of one of the most significant civil rights laws in history, the Voting Rights Act; principal sponsor of the Ban on Partial Birth Abortion, arguably the most important pro-life legislation since Roe vs Wade; House Impeachment Manager of President William Jefferson Clinton; the only full committee chairman out of 16 Members of Congress from Ohio – Chairman of the House Small Business Committee; rated by the Center for Effective Lawmaking, a partnership between the University of Virginia, Vanderbilt University, the Hewlett Foundation, and the Democracy Fund, as the most effective Member of Congress from Ohio, and the seventh most effective Republican out of 240 Members of the House of Representatives; rated by Citizens Against Government Waste as one of the top five (out of 435) Members of Congress in voting against wasteful spending; one of the two principal sponsors of the legislation signed into law by President Trump this year to protect American school children in the wake of the Parkland Florida school shooting; principal sponsor in the House of legislation signed into law earlier this year by President Trump which reformed the main SBA loan program utilized by small businesses across America; author of landmark Victims Rights legislation signed into law by President Bush; top leader in welfare reform over the years, particularly in requiring able-bodied recipients to work; chief sponsor in the House of the Girls Count Act, signed into law by President Obama, which required the State Department to work with other nations to require birth certificates for vulnerable girls to avoid sexual exploitation and human trafficking; chief sponsor of the Veterans Entrepreneurship Act, signed into law by President Trump waiving the hefty SBA filing fee for veterans to help them start small businesses. And that’s just for a start.
Some of the federal funding I’ve been able to secure for our community over the years include the following: $53 million for the Brent Spence Bridge, so far; $5 million for the Western Hills Viaduct, and recently brought Secretary of Transportation Elaine Chao to Cincinnati to discuss these and other local transportation needs; $16 Million for the Waldvogel Viaduct connecting Price Hill to the downtown area; $10 million for the total rebuilding of Fort Washington Way (between downtown Cincinnati and the Banks); millions for I-75 and I-71 corridor improvements; $6 million for the Riverfront Parks; $250,000 for The Banks street grid; millions for the Galbraith Exit flyover; $12 million for the Mill Creek Restoration project; $6 million for the University of Cincinnati Medical Sciences Building; nearly a $1 million for the Findlay Market Restoration; $3 Million for the Cincinnati Zoo parking garage; approximately $1 Million for the Martin Luther King Interchange; $2 Million for Cincinnati Police cameras in high crime areas and $600,000 for body camera equipment; a million for the Cincinnati School for the Creative and Performing Arts; a quarter million dollars for the Lincoln Heights Health Center and nearly a million dollars for a Good Samaritan Hospital mammography machine, to name but a few of the successful efforts I’ve had in obtaining federal funding for local causes.
Thought you’d want to know. See you next week.