Tracking Virginia's Sixth District Congressman
Congressman Cline will meet with constituents on Friday March 3 at 8 a.m. in Roanoke City at Golden Corral Buffet & Grill, 1441 Towne Square Boulevard Northwest. Register here.
According to Cline’s website: “Citizens of Roanoke City will be given priority regarding comments during Coffee with Your Congressman. One (1) ticket per registrant. Attendees will be responsible for any food and/or beverages purchased during the event. Signs and noisemakers are prohibited.”
Congressman Cline will meet with constituents on Monday February 20 at 5 p.m. in Frederick County at West Oaks Farm Market, 4305 Middle Road, Winchester. Register here.
.According to Cline’s website: “Citizens of Frederick County will be given priority regarding comments during the town hall. One (1) ticket per registrant. Attendees will be responsible for any food and/or beverages purchased during the event. Signs and noisemakers are prohibited.”
Congressman Cline sank to new depths last week when he appeared as a guest on “War Room,” the podcast of self-styled Leninist (“Lenin wanted to destroy the state, and that’s my goal too.”) Steve Bannon. (Bannon’s interview with Cline starts at 26:57.)
Bannon, former chief strategist for then-President Trump, was indicted in 2020 for collecting donations to build a U.S.-Mexico border wall and using some of the money to enrich himself. Trump pardoned him on his last day in office.
Bannon opens his podcast by ominously proclaiming: “Pray for our enemies. ‘Cause we’re going to go medieval on these people.”
I can’t help noticing that Bannon favors the word “enemies” rather than “opponents.” I’m not sure who Bannon’s enemies are, but I suspect they include me and tens of millions of other Americans. And “go medieval” doesn’t exactly suggest inviting people for a civil discussion of differences.
If Ben “Mr. Bipartisanship” Cline had any qualms about this, he didn’t raise them.
Bannon began the interview by claiming that President Biden’s assertion that some Republicans want to cut Social Security is a “bald-faced lie.” (It’s not.)
Cline replied: “We have to put out a balanced budget that preserves and protects Social Security and Medicare and does not go after those essential programs.”
Bannon then asked: “What are your constituents telling you after they heard the State of the Union?”
Cline said: “They’re furious and so am I.”
(Earlier this month Cline said we were furious that DirecTV was no longer streaming the rightwing Newsmax channel because of a dispute over carriage fees. Does he think we live in a permanent state of fury?)
He continued: “[Biden] baits us by saying, ‘Oh you all want to cut Social Security and Medicare.’ Well, of course we’re going to object in the middle of his speech…When somebody lies to your face, you’re gonna tell them they’re lying to their face. And that’s what we did during the State of the Union.”
If Biden was baiting Cline and his fellow Republicans, he succeeded quite well. He got them to agree that there would be no cuts to Social Security or Medicare. And Cline is the one who is lying about wanting to preserve and protect Social Security and Medicare. He is a member of the Republican Study Committee, which wants to slash Social Security and Medicare benefits for tens of millions of aging and retiring Americans.
Just this week, Cline told a meeting of constituents in Winchester that he thinks Social Security should be “means tested.” He said that “millionaires shouldn’t be getting Social Security.” Does that mean people who pay into Social Security all their working lives aren’t necessarily entitled to it? And how does Cline propose to determine who is a millionaire and who isn’t?
Bannon then switched the subject to Cline’s role on the House Judiciary Committee, chaired by Cline’s friend Jim Jordan, who is purporting to investigate the Biden administration’s “weaponization” of the Department of Justice and the intelligence agencies.
Cline explained: “When the DoJ and when our intelligence agencies don’t respond, that’s when they bring me in. I’m the chair of this little rump subcommittee called ‘Responsiveness and Accountability Oversight.’ And so they want me to haul these people up to the Hill, read them the riot act and try and convince them that cooperating with the Judiciary Committee is better than the alternative, which is being held in contempt… [Jordan] needs a bulldog at the subcommittee level to make their lives hell, quite frankly. And so he’s tasked me with that responsibility.”
I can’t wait to see how that plays out. But on the matter of non-cooperation with House committees: In October 2022, Steve Bannon was sentenced to four months in prison and a $6,500 fine after he was convicted for refusing to comply with a subpoena from the House of Representatives committee investigating the January 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol. He is free pending appeal.
Mysteriously, that topic never came up during the interview.
Congressman Cline will meet with constituents on Thursday February 16 at 12 noon in Salem at Lydia’s Italian Kitchen, 1713 Riverview Drive.
According to Cline’s website: “Citizens of Salem will be given priority regarding comments during the town hall. One (1) ticket per registrant. Attendees will be responsible for any food and/or beverages purchased during the event. Signs and noisemakers are prohibited.”
Register here.
Congressman Cline will meet with constituents on Monday February 13 at 5:30 p.m.in Alleghany County at Family Tree T’s Cafe 100 Old Church Street, Low Moor (register here); and on Wednesday February 15 at 12 noon in Winchester at Piccadilly’s Public House & Restaurant 125 East Piccadilly Street (register here).
There is no shortage of possible questions for the congressman.
Congressman Cline, a regular guest on the rightwing Newsmax channel, thinks those of us who live in his Congressional district are “furious” that they can’t watch it on DirecTV anymore.
He said so during an interview on, um, Newsmax:
“My constituents are furious because they rely on Newsmax for information that cuts through all the woke rhetoric to actually provide people in the Shenandoah and Roanoke valleys with facts and not a spin in a liberal direction. So, they’re so upset at losing [Newsmax], they’ve been calling my office.”
Despite the best efforts of Cline and others to turn this into a case of liberal censorship of conservative viewpoints, DirecTV’s decision to drop Newsmax was an economic one, a function of the free market that Cline purports to revere.
In a statement, DirecTV said it wanted to “continue to offer the network,” but the channel’s demands for carriage fee increases would have led to “significantly higher costs that we would have to pass on to our broad customer base.”
Newsmax wanted more money from DirecTV, and DirecTV didn’t want to pay it. So they dropped it. Capitalism in action.
While I have no doubt that some people in the Sixth District are angry, and have contacted Cline’s office, I would be curious to know exactly how many– compared, say, to the number who have contacted him to support reproductive rights or gun violence prevention measures, or to denounce his votes to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election, or to urge him to protect Social Security and Medicare from cuts…
Strangely he has never discussed these contacts.
My guess is that only a very small percentage of Cline’s constituents are devoted, furious viewers of Newsmax. But of course those are the ones to whom he thinks he needs to pay attention.
In his new role as chair of the Republican Study Committee’s Budget and Spending Task Force, Congressman Cline signed a letter to President Biden with other House Republicans faulting the president for missing budget deadlines and failing to submit a balanced budget.
They wrote:
The American people have spoken and made it abundantly clear that the United States must no longer be governed in a state of crisis or brinkmanship. They expect their duly elected leaders to take the initiative to ensure that the vital functions of government are managed responsibly and in a timely manner.
The urgency of our Nation’s fiscal crisis is unprecedented. It is imperative that we move quickly to address skyrocketing inflation, a crippling $31.5 trillion in national debt, and the impending insolvency of our Nation’s major trust funds.
With the induction of a new Congress, Democrats and Republicans must seize this opportunity to fix our Nation’s unsustainable financial trajectory. That process must begin with your submission of a balanced Presidential Budget to Congress.
What makes this letter laughable is the following:
• As president, Donald Trump missed deadlines for submitting a budget in two of his four years as president. Cline and his fellow Republicans were silent.
• Trump never once submitted a budget that was even close to balanced. Trump’s administration incurred nearly 25 percent of the current national debt. Cline and his fellow Republicans were silent.
• Instead of considering ways to protect the Social Security and Medicare trust funds, Cline and his RSC cohorts propose cutting benefits to seniors who depend on them.
Not only did Congressman Cline display his ignorance by faulting the Biden administration for failing to shoot down the Chinese spy balloon while it was over Montana, and the debris could have injured or killed people or destroyed property on the ground, but he somehow connected it to classified documents found in Biden’s garage and to Hunter Biden’s laptop.
Following his reappointment (after a two-year gap) to the House Judiciary Committee, Congressman Cline posted on Facebook:
In fact there’s a lot more evidence that Cline’s “friend” Congressman Jordan (now the committee chair) ignored reports of sexual abuse of wrestlers at the Ohio State University than there is that the Biden administration is “weaponizing” the federal government. But I don’t suppose Cline and other House Republicans will be pursuing that.
Now Cline is pretending to be outraged at the discovery of some classified documents in Biden’s possession from when he was vice president and a senator.
I say “pretending” because Cline expressed absolutely no outrage about the discovery of classified and secret documents at Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago residence following an FBI raid last year. In fact the only outrage he did express was that the FBI executed a legal search warrant approved by a federal judge based on evidence of possible criminality.
By contrast, Biden voluntarily allowed a search of his property.
And we have yet to hear from Cline about the discovery of classified documents at the home of Republican former vice president Mike Pence.
Congressman Cline: Do you also have “some questions” for Trump and Pence?
With all the time and effort that Cline will devote to chasing wild geese, I hope he’ll have some time to devote to the real needs of his constituents.
Congressman Cline seems awfully proud to be selected to chair the Republican Study Committee’s Budget and Spending Task Force.
What Cline doesn’t mention is that the RSC wants to slash Social Security and Medicare benefits for tens of millions of aging and retiring Americans.
Under a plan developed by the Republican Study Committee, a group of conservatives in the House, senior citizens would face a five-year delay to claim Medicare, the government health care program for seniors that currently allows people to access the program when they turn 65. And the retirement age for Social Security would also increase to 70, compared with today’s full retirement age of between 66 and 67 years old.
The reason for the push? The “miracle” of longer life expectancies, according to the Republican Study Committee’s documents. But while Americans are living longer than in earlier generations, the average age of retirement is 61 — or 5 years earlier than workers say they had expected to step back from the workforce, according to Gallup. In other words, people may believe they’ll work longer, but on average, Americans are stepping back five to six years before they even reach Social Security’s current full retirement age.
Because of this, boosting the age to claim benefits would likely increase hardship and poverty for older Americans, especially for low-income, rural Americans and those who have to stop working due to health issues or to take care of family members, experts say.
Older? Low-income? Rural? That’s a big part of the population of the part of Virginia that Cline purports to represent.
That means either missing three years of benefits compared with current retirees, or opting to claim benefits earlier — which Social Security allows retirees to do — in exchange for a permanent reduction in benefits. Generally, retiring three years earlier than the full retirement age equates to a 20% decline in monthly benefits, according to the Social Security Administration.
“That means that for even those people who work to age 70, you never catch up with the cut in benefits,” said Nancy Altman, the president of Social Security Works, an advocacy group for the benefit program.
She added, “It particularly hurts those in low-income, physically demanding jobs” who are more likely to stop working earlier due to health issues.
Postponing eligibility for Medicare “would leave most older Americans age 65 -70 significantly underinsured and threatens their finances and their health,” said Mary Johnson, Social Security and Medicare policy analyst, at The Senior Citizens League, an advocacy group for older Americans.
While Cline claims to worry about the long-term fiscal stability of Social Security, and whether it will be available for his daughters, his only solution is to make it harder for older Americans to achieve financial security in their later years.
Would he support legislation to protect Social Security by lifting the cap on taxes for the highest-income Americans and requiring them to pay more to protect a program that’s essential for the well-being of lower-income Americans?
I think we know the answer to that.
Cline Watch 