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Ryan, Vance Senate Race Q&A, Part 2

This combination of photos shows Ohio Democratic Senate candidate Rep. Tim Ryan, D-Ohio, on March 28, 2022, in Wilberforce, Ohio, left, and Republican candidate JD Vance on Aug. 5, 2022, in Dallas. (AP Photo)

Editor’s note: U.S. Rep. Tim Ryan, D-Ohio, and Republican JD Vance are in a tight race to replace retiring U.S. Sen. Rob Portman, R-Ohio, on the Nov. 8 ballot. Below is Part 2 of a two-part series created by our sister publication in Warren, Ohio. Each candidate answered 10 questions; with the first five of their answers published Monday.

∫ MEDICARE

Q: Would you seek to expand or reduce Medicare coverage? If so, please elaborate.

VANCE: I think you have to keep Medicare coverage in terms of age cut-offs about where it is. The Medicare program, a lot of people have paid into it, a lot of people expect it, and it should be there for them. One of the real big mistakes that we made in this country about 10 years ago is that we cut a lot of people off of their Medicare and shifted them onto the Obamacare system, which a lot of people found difficult to navigate and, I think, really, really harmed a lot of our seniors in the process. The one thing that I actually agree with the Biden administration on allowing Medicare to more aggressively negotiate prescription drug prices is actually a very good thing and is one way of expanding access to some of these life-saving medicines without completely blowing up the federal budget. But broadly speaking, I think the Medicare program works for our seniors. We should more or less keep it the same, obviously, expand coverage, expand access, expand options. But I’ve heard proposals that we should expand Medicare for all. That’s a huge mistake and a slap in the face to our seniors. I’ve heard that we should maybe lower the eligibility to 55. It makes sense setting it at 55. But you can always make the program work a little bit better, allowing, like I said, the government to negotiate prescription drug prices is one option. I think Medicare Part D, obviously, a lot of seniors have taken advantage of that. That’s increased some optionality. Things like that generally take us in the right direction. I think we can build on that stuff without taking Medicare away from our seniors.

RYAN: I would drop the Medicare age to 60 and allow people to buy in. We have a significant crisis with people in their 60s and even late 50s to get the kind of health insurance that they need. So, I think we should allow people to buy into the Medicare program. I also think we’ve got to continue to do what we just did. I think for the first time ever we allowed the Medicare program to be able to negotiate down drug prices. That was a significant step. We’ve been talking about that for a long time. We capped Medicare Part D cost at $2,000 a year. My mom, for one, falls into the doughnut hole where she’ll pay $1,000 (a month) out of pocket for prescription drugs. This will cap it at $2,000 a year. We did insulin at $35. So, you know, those kinds of things. I also think we, at some point, need to move into hearing aids, dental, glasses, like make that part of the Medicare program as well, because our seniors, their retirement has significantly been reduced, not just with inflation, but we’ve seen people lose their pensions. We’ve seen a diminishment in defined benefit plans. So, anything we can do to help our seniors keep their heads above water, I think we should do, and again, that should not be a partisan issue.

BROADBAND

Q: How much of a role should the federal government play in increasing accessibility to affordable and reliable broadband?

VANCE: It’s an important question. I think the federal government is just going to have to play an important role. I mean, look, if you don’t have access to high-quality broadband, your local economy is going to get left behind in one form or another. Obviously, a lot of these companies in our rural areas don’t want to expand broadband. Maybe it’s infrastructurally too difficult. Maybe it doesn’t make financial sense for them. That’s one of the critical things the federal government has to do is it has to step in and encourage broadband access in our rural areas, in our small towns, but obviously in our big cities as well. The infrastructure bill that was passed about a year and a half ago, it had a lot in it that I didn’t like. On net, I don’t think it was a great piece of legislation. But it did have some funding for rural broadband and broadband connectivity, more broadly. I think that’s the basic right approach is that the government needs to provide. One of the critical things the federal government has to do is provide core infrastructure ä good roads and bridges, good airports, and I think now in the 21st century, good broadband.

RYAN: I think the federal government has a significant role. This is reminiscent, I think, of the Tennessee Valley Authority where we needed to have the federal government get involved with making sure people had electricity. There’s no way you can have a modern economy today if you don’t have broadband. Traveling the state, I know that there are a significant number of counties that don’t have access to quality broadband, farmers who need it for precision agriculture, schools and all the rest. I use the example of the Intel project. Here we have a $100 billion investment. We’re going to see 30, 40 suppliers. We’re hearing that maybe even other chip manufacturers want to move to Ohio. My goal is how do we plug this economic development and these suppliers into smaller mid-sized communities that have been left behind? So if there’s 100 jobs here, 200 jobs there, how do we get them to Marietta, Portsmouth, Lima, Warren, Ohio, you know, Sandusky? But you can’t do that if you don’t have good broadband. So, if you’re going to plug these communities in, we’ve got to have a significant broadband investment. So, we put a bunch of money into the infrastructure bill. We’ll see where that gets us. Hopefully, it can be a public-private partnership at some point. Then also cost. You can have like in the inner cities, you may have access, but the costs are prohibitive. So, helping with costs too I think would be important.

FILIBUSTER

Q: Do you support ending the filibuster? Why or why not?

VANCE: I definitely don’t support ending the filibuster. The reason why is sort of twofold. First of all, you hear a lot of talk about bipartisanship and how the parties need to work together to actually get things done. Ending the filibuster would be the end of any bipartisan legislation in this country because it would allow one party to effectively steamroll another party even if they have a very, very narrow majority. I’m obviously a Republican, I’m a conservative, I agree with my own party a lot more than I agree with the other side. But there are some things, like for example, I think that banning members of Congress from trading stocks. I think that’s something you get a lot of Democrats on board and frankly, some Republicans would not be so excited about. No way a piece of legislation like that happens if you end the filibuster because it would end any reason for the parties to actually get things done outside of their own party. The other reason is that would actually empower congressional leadership even more so than they already are. We know that the speaker of the House and the U.S. Senate majority leader are really, really powerful within their chambers. If you end the filibuster and effectively allow those leaders to completely control the legislative agenda, I actually think it would make our entire system of government work less well. I’m trying to be a senator. It would make United States senators less independent in how they conduct their business.

RYAN: I do support ending the filibuster. I think the Senate is the only legislative body in the country where you need 60% to pass something. Every town council, every city council, it’s pretty much 50% – it’s 50% plus one. I just think that if you win an election, you should be able to pass your agenda. Now there’s still, like, built-in protections from, I think, extremism. The House still has to vote on things. The Senate still needs 51 votes. Under this scenario, there’s still a president who has veto power. So there’s ample checks and balances. But China, if they want to do something, they move on an economic development initiative or whatever. And I just think that the country is paralyzed right now. I say this as a Democrat, like if the Republicans win elections and they control everything, they should be able to implement their agenda, and then let the people vote on what they do. Then, it’s the same for Democrats. And we’re kind of doing that right now. Well, I mean, we’ve passed a lot of stuff with 51 votes. So we’re going to have to answer to the public on that. Whoever wins the election, then will have an opportunity to either change that or build upon it. I think that’s fair, but we’ve got to get moving on it. It’s a very antiquated process that we need to get rid of.

POLITICAL DIVIDE

Q: What is your view of the divide in the current state of politics in our country? If elected, would you try to change it?

VANCE: My view of the divide is that it’s a symptom of a country that’s moving in the wrong direction in a lot of ways. If we’re being honest, has moved in the wrong direction in pretty profound ways not just over the last couple of years, but over the last 30 or 40 years. I was looking at statistics because I knew I was going to be in the Mahoning Valley, and Trumbull County, I believe, had something like 25,000 GM employees in 1972. It now has, of course, far fewer than that, hundreds of GM employees, if that, maybe 1,500 at most. You realize that a lot of the rancor and a lot of the division in our politics comes from the fact that the country isn’t doing that well. Suicide rates are rising; life expectancy is dropping. I tend to think the divisiveness in American politics is because our leadership has failed, and that creates hostilities in our political system. The way to fix the divisiveness is to actually get the long-term trends in the country moving in the right direction again. We should be adding manufacturing jobs, not subtracting them. Our life expectancy should be increasing like every other civilized country, not decreasing. If you do that you create some prosperity and security in people’s lives. Then the political rancor starts to go away.

RYAN: Senate is ground zero for politics today. I think I would be a good fit for reaching across the aisle. That’s been my career on the Appropriations Committee has been working with guys like Dave Joyce on Great Lakes water issues. When I first got in, it was Dave Hobson, it was Ralph Regula. The Appropriations Committee is a committee where I’ve really learned that there’s a saying in D.C.: there’s Democrats, there’s Republicans and there’s appropriators because the appropriators always have to figure out how to come together and pass appropriations bills. The last two Congresses I’ve been ranked in the top 10 percent of most bipartisan members of Congress, and I would just want to continue that. And we’re getting in here with low-dollar donations. I’m going to get in not owing anybody anything. I think I’m going to be in a very, very unique position to reach across the aisle without having to explain myself to anybody who gave me $40 million.

SKILLS AND EXPERIENCE

Q: What specific skills or experiences do you have that shows that you can be an effective senator?

VANCE: The first is that in my professional life I’ve created jobs, been involved in nearly 1,000 jobs created in the state of Ohio. I do think that it’s important to bring some insights into how the economy works, if you want to create broadly shared prosperity for people in the state of Ohio. That certainly helps. The second thing is in the United States Senate, obviously, is about communication, about persuading your colleagues, and the experience that I’ve had shows that I can persuade people, that I can actually get people to think about new ideas, or maybe old ideas in a new light. And that’s important in a U.S. Senate that’s currently pretty broken and doesn’t get a whole lot done for the American people ä certainly not a whole lot done for the people of Ohio. Just personally, I don’t care about these issues at a purely intellectual level. I grew up in a working-class family. I was raised by a pretty poor woman, my grandma, who believed in this country, but also recognized that it didn’t always provide great opportunities to poor kids. I bring a certain heart to these issues. I recognize that if we don’t do our job, if we fail, it’s very often the least-fortunate citizens in our state who suffer because of it.

RYAN: I think you look at our area. For the last 20 years, we’ve been working on economic development issues. Again, not asking who’s a Democrat, who’s Republican, oh, we’re not going to work with the chamber of commerce because that’s where all the Republicans are, whatever. I think what I’ve shown and my leadership has shown is that you put a long-term strategy together, you bring people together around that strategy and you execute it. That’s really what we’ve done. I’ve used my position on the Appropriations Committee to do that. I mean, it’s the energy incubator here now in Warren, Ohio, that has companies spinning out buying industrial properties, whether it’s the old WCI headquarters or warehouse or another industrial building. That was the plan 20, 15 years ago, like get new high-tech companies to spin out of an incubator that I made sure was in downtown Warren because they’re going to buy properties around that. You look at what’s going on in downtown Youngstown. You look at help for the amphitheater and the riverwalk and all of those things. That was part of a long-term plan. So this plan has come together. I’m not here to wave a magic wand or sell anybody anything. I’m here to say, like, we’re going to put a plan together for Ohio like we’re doing and continue to work it, and I think we’ve got some really good examples around here on how I’ve been able to do that.

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