‘We are not going to back down,’ says Portman

By Patty Rice Groth

Inquirer Cor­re­spon­dent

The Craw­ford County Repub­li­can Women orga­ni­za­tion delayed their annual Lin­coln Day cel­e­bra­tion until Fri­day, March 1, in order to accom­mo­date the sched­ule of U.S. Sen­a­tor Rob Port­man (R-Ohio). That day was sched­uled as a “day off” for the sen­a­tor along with his col­leagues in the U.S. House and Sen­ate. Like the major­ity of his fel­low law­mak­ers, Portman’s sched­uled day off was filled with oppor­tu­ni­ties to meet and speak with con­stituents around the state.

Fol­low­ing wel­com­ing remarks and intro­duc­tions of local elected offi­cials, Sis Love, pres­i­dent of the Bucyrus Coun­cil and pres­i­dent of the Craw­ford County Repub­li­can Women’s club, intro­duced Sen­a­tor Port­man, out­lin­ing his expe­ri­ence in the U.S. Sen­ate since Jan­u­ary of 2011, hav­ing served in two cabinet-level posi­tions and in the U.S. House of Representatives.

The Repub­li­can Party, said Port­man, “is the party of growth, the party of oppor­tu­nity.” The party’s eco­nomic and tax poli­cies will pro­vide the needed lead­er­ship to bring the coun­try out of its slow recov­ery, said Port­man, crit­i­ciz­ing the poli­cies of Pres­i­dent Barack Obama as he trav­els the coun­try pro­mot­ing tax increases for the wealthy. “Cam­paign­ing, not lead­ing” is how he char­ac­ter­ized Obama’s recent behavior.

“We Repub­li­cans want to grow this econ­omy. We want to bring back the jobs. We want to get over this dol­drum we are liv­ing through. We want to get rid of this exces­sive debt.” Port­man said the aver­age income in Ohio has gone down over the last four years. Higher costs of expenses like gaso­line and health care are cre­at­ing a “mid­dle class squeeze,” as much as a $4,000 effec­tive reduc­tion in median income.

Repub­li­cans, said Port­man, sug­gest that a pick and choose reduc­tion in costs strat­egy would be more effec­tive than the across-the-board reduc­tions spec­i­fied by the sequester. The flex­i­bil­ity to iden­tify and elim­i­nate unnec­es­sary bureau­cra­cies and cost over-runs was declined by Obama as an effec­tive strategy.

“We Repub­li­cans are not going to back down from get­ting these sav­ings,” said Port­man. The Congres-sional Bud­get Office, an non­par­ti­san agency, says an extra $10 tril­lion will be added to the debt over the next 10 years unless some­thing is done, said Portman.

The chal­lenge as Repub­li­cans is to make sure peo­ple know what is going on, in a more effec­tive way, what alter­na­tives there are.

“We have a mes­sage prob­lem,” said Port­man. “We weren’t get­ting through to peo­ple that we are the party for oppor­tu­nity and growth.” Repub­li­cans need to be con­vinced that there is a strat­egy and a plan other than oppos­ing any­thing Obama sug­gests. The mes­sage doesn’t need to change; the mes­sage needs to refo­cused that Repub­li­cans have a way to improve the national econ­omy, sup­ported by the Amer­i­can work ethic.

Asked what can cit­i­zens do at the local level to push the eco­nomic recov­ery and the gov­ern­ment stale­mate for­ward, Port­man said, “Write your Con­gress­man. Write your Sen­a­tor.” Know­ing what vot­ers think is impor­tant in Con­gress. Sen­a­tor Port­man encour­ages his con­stituents to send him their ideas on ways to reduce the bud­get deficit.

In Jan­u­ary Port­man — with 29 co-sponsors — pro­posed Sen­ate Bill 43, The Dollar-for-Dollar Deficit Reduc­tion Act. That bill has been referred to the Bud­get Committee.

Sen­ate Bill 43 would add a require­ment that the U.S. Trea­sury warn spec­i­fied Con­gres­sional com­mit­tee when the debt limit would be exceeded. That warn­ing would include a deter­mi­na­tion as to when “extra­or­di­nary mea­sures” may be nec­es­sary to pro­long the fund­ing of the government.

The bill spec­i­fies that any request from a pres­i­dent to increase the debt limit must include spend­ing reduc­tions in the same amount. Con­gress would be pro­hib­ited from approv­ing any leg­is­la­tion, res­o­lu­tion, amend­ment or motion which increases the pub­lic debt limit unless the pro­posed increase has been pub­licly avail­able on the Con­gres­sional Bud­get Office’s web site for at least 24 hours. The pro­posed leg­is­la­tion pro­vides to waivers and appeals.

Sen­ate Bill 43 is very short and eas­ily read. It is avail­able online. A copy should be avail­able from Sen­a­tor Portman’s office.

Posted by Matt Echelberry on Mar 8 2013. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.