Ohio Senate Debate: Tim Ryan Says ‘Everybody Is to Blame’ for Inflation
- Oops!Something went wrong.Please try again later.
Representative Tim Ryan (D., Ohio) said “everybody is to blame” for inflation when he was asked specifically during an Ohio Senate debate on Monday whether President Biden is at fault for rising costs.
During a debate with Republican J. D. Vance, Ryan dodged a question about whether he believes Democrats’ spending bills, which he has voted for, have contributed to inflation.
Democrats passed the massive so-called Inflation Reduction Act over the summer, a measure that allocates $369 billion for energy and climate initiatives and another $64 billion to extend for another three years the federal subsidies for people buying health insurance. Despite its name, the bill’s impact on inflation is “expected to be statistically indistinguishable from zero,” according to an independent analysis performed by the University of Pennsylvania Wharton School.
Democrats had previously passed a $1.9 trillion spending bill in March 2021, the so-called American Rescue Plan. Congress also passed a $1.2 trillion bipartisan infrastructure spending bill last November.
Ryan first pointed to the bipartisan infrastructure bill and the bipartisan Chips and Science Act, which aims to increase domestic production of computer chips to allow the U.S. to become more competitive against China in the global technology market. He mentioned the Inflation Reduction Act only to accuse Vance of misrepresenting Ryan’s position on natural gas; Ryan said that he has been a proponent of natural gas as long as he’s been in Congress and that the U.S. must increase its production of natural gas.
“But here’s the problem,” Ryan said. “J. D. Vance is invested into companies in China. The problem we’re having now with inflation is our supply chains all went to China, and guys like him have made a lot of money off that, and that is exactly why the supply chain is locked up.”
“We’re coming out of a pandemic, it’s a problem,” he said. “The question is are we going to sit around for another ten years and point fingers? What I’ve been proposing is a significant tax cut for working people and small businesses, put money in people’s pockets.”
He concluded by saying that while “we could sit here and argue about why” inflation is happening, it is a “global phenomenon right now.”
He also reaffirmed that he does not believe Biden should run again in 2024.
“No, I’ve been very clear,” Ryan said when asked whether he wants Biden to run for reelection. “I’d like to see a generational change: Mitch McConnell, Donald Trump, the president, everybody.”
The pair then took on the topic of abortion, with Ryan saying he supports returning to Roe v. Wade when asked whether he supports any limits on abortion.
“That was established law for 50 years, and we didn’t have all the chaos we’re having now,” he said. “We read at least a couple of articles every week of young people, underaged girls who have been raped or women who have had significant problems with their pregnancy not be able to get help in the state.”
He then said that Vance has called rape “inconvenient.”
Asked whether women should be able to have an abortion in the event of incest or rape, Vance replied in September 2021 that “the question betrays a certain presumption that’s wrong.”
“It’s not whether a woman should be forced to bring a child to term; it’s whether a child should be allowed to live, even though the circumstances of that child’s birth are somehow inconvenient or a problem to the society,” Vance said at the time. “The question to me is really about the baby. We want women to have opportunities, we want women to have choices, but, above all, we want women and young boys in the womb to have a right to life.”
Vance on Monday denied calling rape inconvenient and said he would be “totally fine” with a minimum national standard limit on abortion. Senator Lindsey Graham (R., S.C.) proposed a national 15-week ban last month.
“My view on this is, generally speaking, Ohio is going to want to have different abortion laws than California than Texas, and I think Ohio should have that right, but some minimum national standard is totally fine with me,” Vance said.
Vance later added that he has “always believed in reasonable exceptions.” Regarding the widely reported case of a ten-year-old Ohio girl who had difficulty obtaining an abortion after being raped, he suggested that the girl should have been able to get an abortion.
Vance then accused the media and Ryan of failing to mention that the girl was raped by an illegal alien.
“You voted so many times against border-wall funding, so many times for amnesty, Tim,” Vance said. “If you had done your job, she would have never been raped in the first place. Don’t lecture me about opinions I don’t actually have.”
Ryan was asked about a 2009 op-ed he wrote in which he described himself as a pro-life member of Congress.
After having “very personal conversations with women in Ohio who had gone through tragedies who needed to have abortions for a variety of different reasons,” he said, his opinion on the issue changed. “I just came to realize through the course of these conversations that the government has no place in this matter, that this needs to be left to the woman. It needs to be left to the doctor to make these decisions.”
Ryan has voted in support of the Women’s Health Protection Act, a Democrat bill to “codify” Roe that would supersede any law that “singles out” and “impedes access” to abortion.
A RealClearPolitics polling average shows Vance leading Ryan by 1.4 percentage points.
