In February Congress approved and President Biden signed the Postal Reform Act to financially strengthen and secure the U.S. Postal Service while protecting the jobs of the people who provide this essential service.

Even though the Postal Service is a critical connection to the outside world for rural parts of the Sixth District, Congressman Cline was among a minority of Republicans who voted NO.

Now we learn that Cline has raised the possibility of privatizing the Postal Service.

“The Postal Service, just like several other federal agencies, is an inefficient bureaucracy that can’t innovate and keep up with the times,” Cline said in an interview Friday with the John Solomon Reports podcast. “And rather than just continue to reward them with more and bigger budgets, we need to start demanding results. And, you know, put in some triggers, where you incentivize these bureaucrats to actually cut costs.

“Or then they either have part of their business outsourced or, you know, the British have just finished privatizing their postal service. So I think we’ve got some catching up to do. And I think that  a new Republican majority has just the opportunity to explore those options.”

But what kind of cost-cutting does Cline have in mind? What guarantee is there that privatizing the Postal Service would not result in reduced service to the thousands of small communities that depend on it? After all, serving many of these areas is not profitable. It costs more money than it brings in. But that’s exactly why the Postal Service needs to remain a public service.

Cline likes to prove his devotion to the Constitution by pulling out a copy of it from his coat pocket at every opportunity. But Article I, Section 8 gives Congress the power “To establish Post Offices and post Roads” and “To make all Laws which shall be necessary and proper” for executing this task. Unlike Cline, the Founders considered postal services to be a core responsibility of government. It still is.

Speaking to an audience in Clifton Forge on October 5 for about 20 minutes, Congressman Cline couldn’t restrain himself from a number of dubious and outright false assertions.

Discussing asylum seekers at the southern border who are allowed into the United States and assigned dates for hearings, Cline claimed, “Most of them disappear.”

In fact:

A study published last year in the University of Pennsylvania Law Review found that “88% of all immigrants in immigration court with completed or pending removal cases over the past eleven years attended all of their court hearings.” The analysis of government data also revealed that 95% of nondetained individuals who filed for asylum or other forms of relief from removal attended all of their court hearings over the same time period from 2008 to 2018, the authors said.

Referring to the fentanyl crisis in alarmist terms, Cline said, “Fentanyl is killing children, literally… I’m not trying to create any kind of uh, uh, uh, just fever, but I am worried about Halloween because the fentanyl is showing up in multi-colors looking like candy. It’s scary stuff.”

Fentanyl is a serious problem. But even Fox News debunked that one:

Dr. Sheila Vakharia, who is the head of the Drug Policy Alliance, said dealers use the colors to “distinguish their product from other products on the street.”

Other experts questioned why dealers would be motivated to target children, arguing that kids lack the financial resources to be consistent customers and that penalties for dealing drugs to children are much more severe.

Joseph Palamar, an associate professor in the Department of Population Health at New York University Langone Medical Center, told Fox News Digital last week that the drugs are also likely too expensive to give away.

“I’ve always found this concern to be exaggerated. I’m sure this does happen sometimes, but it is unlikely. Even if fentanyl pills were only a few dollars each, most people would likely find them too expensive to give to kids on Halloween as a sick joke,” Palamar told Fox News Digital last week.

On the topic of energy, Cline insisted, “The Biden administration is putting a lid on any new [oil] exploration, any new approval of leases [on federal land].”

But while the Biden administration did pause new oil leases on public lands and water in 2022, the oil industry was awash in unused permits.

Combined, the oil and gas industry holds leases to more than 25 million acres of publicly-owned minerals, roughly half of which sit unused. Companies now hold more than 9,000 approved, but unused, drilling permits on national public lands, all of which could be put to use today. Further, oil production on public lands is near all time highs, despite industry claims that the Biden administration has suppressed domestic production.

The Inflation Reduction Act, which Cline and every other Republican in Congress opposed, opens more federal land to oil and gas projects as a tradeoff for solar and wind projects getting access to federal land.

Discussing inflation, Cline said, “I was told by an economist that one of the signs of a recession is when folks switch from hot dog buns to white bread. I was mocked by my opponents for making that point.”

Inflation is certainly a hardship for low-income families. And there may be people who have had to make that switch. But the savings would surely be minimal even for financially-stressed families. And it would be interesting to know the name of the economist who told that to Cline.

I looked for other evidence of people making the switch from hot dog buns to white bread, and the only other reference I found were these tweets from Natalie Allison, a reporter for Politico, who covered a speech at a CPAC conference last summer by JD Vance, Republican candidate for US Senate from Ohio:

Ben Cline was at the same conference. Did he hear Vance’s remarks and mistake him for an economist?

I’ve posted most of this information before, but after Thursday’s hearing of the House Select Committee investigating the January 6, 2021, insurrection at the U.S. Capitol– demonstrating beyond a doubt Donald Trump’s central role in instigating the brutal attack and his inexcusable delay in putting an end to it– I think it’s worth repeating.

Just after the November 2020 election– a clear and convincing victory for Joe Biden over Donald Trump— our Sixth District Republican Congressman Ben Cline began enabling lies about massive fraud and illegal voting. (The committee presented evidence that Trump was told repeatedly by the attorney general, his staff and campaign officials that he had lost. Trump knew, but Cline either didn’t know or pretended he didn’t know.)

These lies—boosted endlessly by Cline and other Trump supporters in Congress—helped incite the bloody insurrection by a pro-Trump mob at the United State Capitol on January 6, 2021.

• On November 14, 2020, at a pro-Trump rally in Staunton, Cline suggested with no evidence that there were massive numbers of “illegal votes” in Biden’s favor.
• On November 20, Cline posted on Facebook a photo of him with the deranged pro-Trump conspiracy-monger Sidney Powell. He wrote: “Proud to support my friend Sidney Powell in her fight to count every legal vote for President Donald Trump!” (The post has since been deleted. Does this mean they are no longer friends?)
• Cline continued to prove his pathetic loyalty to Trump by joining more than 100 other Congressional Republicans to sign a brief supporting Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton’s frivolous lawsuit aimed at overturning the results of the election. (The U.S. Supreme Court unanimously rejected the lawsuit.)

As the terrorists were brutally attacking police and minutes before they entered the Capitol, Cline posted on Facebook trying to draw a direct parallel between the objections of a few House Democrats to the result of the 2000 presidential election (for which there were reasons to object) and the objections of Cline and 146 other members of Congress to the clear and convincing election of Joe Biden in 2020.

Where was Cline when he sent his Facebook post? Was he aware of what was happening when he sent it? I’m sorry that no journalist has yet asked him.

Later in the day Cline condemned the actions of the insurrectionists and called on them to be prosecuted. But unlike more responsible Republicans, Cline never acknowledged Trump’s incitement of the mob or that the insurrectionists were acting on Trump’s behalf. He hasn’t done so to this day.

• After the mob was cleared from the building, Cline voted against certifying the election of Joe Biden as president; that is, he did what the insurrectionists wanted.
• As recently as July 2021 Cline attended a Conservative Political Action Conference in Dallas where he shamelessly referred to “our great president Donald J. Trump.”
• In May 2021 Cline voted against a bipartisan commission to investigate January 6. Cline claimed it was “not a non-partisan proposal,” even though it was the product of an agreement between Republican and Democratic congressmen.
• Cline then opposed creation of a House Select Committee to investigate the events surrounding January 6.

Cline has been utterly silent on the harrowing testimony in July 2021 of the four heroic police officers who appeared before that committee. They were among the scores of officers brutalized by the pro-Trump mob at the Capitol on January 6. And they were willing to call out Trump and the Republicans in Congress they held responsible.

He has since dismissed the committee’s hearings as “an echo chamber designed by Nancy Pelosi.”

And does anyone doubt that he will vote NO on holding Trump in contempt if he refuses to comply with the committee’s subpoena?

We have every reason to ask Cline: Whose side is he on?

Congressman: Please don’t try to tell us you are on the side of the brave officers who testified– who put their lives on the line to protect you– or on the side of truth and accountability for the awful events of Janurary 6, 2021. For you, it’s party (and Trump) over country (and decency) every time.

At the candidate forum in Winchester on Saturday, Congressman Cline tried to present himself as a champion of reason and bipartisanship (standing in line for lunch with Democrats in Richmond, brewing beer with a Democratic colleague, etc.) while somehow forgetting to mention that he is a proud member (along with some of the most extreme members of Congress) of the far-right House Freedom Caucus and the proud recipient of a campaign endorsement from Donald Trump.

Cline is more interested in posing as bipartisan in front of certain audiences than he is in being bipartisan.

He proceeded to to call for more resources for law enforcement, even though he voted NO on the American Rescue Plan, which actually funds the police.

He also repeated his frequent claim that the United States is no longer “energy independent” as it supposedly was under Trump’s administration, and asserted that this was a leading cause of inflation. But according to FactCheck.org:

When politicians say that the United States was “energy independent” under former President Donald Trump, some people may get the false impression that the U.S. was 100% self-sufficient. The country still relied on foreign sources of energy, including oil.

To help meet domestic demand, the U.S. has imported oil and other forms of energy from abroad, including from Russia, for many years. And to some energy analysts, a scenario in which the U.S. relies only on the energy it produces is not likely to happen anytime soon.

Instead, those who tout this so-called “energy independence” may be referring to the fact that, on net, the country either produced more energy than it consumed, exported more energy than it imported, or, more specifically, had a greater number of exports than imports of petroleum, which includes crude oil and refined products from crude oil, such as gasoline and various fuels.

However, by any of those definitions, the U.S. was still “energy independent” in 2021 under President Joe Biden — contrary to claims made by Republicans who have suggested otherwise.

Sorry, Congressman. Those are the facts.

On Saturday Congressman Cline participated in a candidate forum in Winchester with his Democratic opponent Jennifer Lewis.

You can perhaps gauge their performances by the fact that Lewis features the forum on her campaign Facebook page (you can view it here, starting at 14:30) while Cline (so far) hasn’t even mentioned it.

If you take the time to watch it, you’ll understand.

As long as I’ve been following Ben Cline’s political career, in the General Assembly and the U.S. Congress, one constant has been his open hostility to labor unions.

In the General Assembly he was a fervent defender of Virginia’s anti-union “right to work” law and helped lead an unsuccessful push to enshrine that law in the Commonwealth’s constitution.

In Congress, Cline has supported an effort to impose right-to-work-for-less on workers across the country.

When he was named to the House Education and Labor Committee in 2019, Cline made clear his hostility to the labor movement.

He said, “The Democrats are going to put all kinds of labor union bills through and I’m anxious to stand up for the right of the worker”– as though the interests of labor unions and the interests of workers are at odds. He then explained what he really meant: “I don’t support forced unionism.”

But Cline really made his contempt for organized labor unmistakable in a speech on the House floor in 2020 denouncing the Protect the Right to Organize (PRO) Act, which would restore some balance to federal labor laws that make it all too easy for employers to thwart union organizing and to avoid dealing with the unions chosen by a majority of their workers.

On Labor Day 2022 in Buena Vista, Cline did what he always does on Labor Day in Buena Vista: emphasize that the only right he supports for workers in the right not to join a union.

But this time his Democratic opponent in the 2022 election, Jennifer Lewis, called him out for the union-basher he is.

So it was fascinating to watch Cline’s change of tone when interviewed at a Labor Day event that afternoon in Covington.

“Both cities [Buena Vista and Covington] have had long traditions of celebrating working man, working women, working families and the union effort. You know, unions have been important here in Covington, unions have been important in Buena Vista, have a history of providing important gains for working families.”

Wow, Congressman. What could possibly have changed your attitude toward unions in the course of one day? Could it have been your opponent’s stinging speech?

But then he added:

“[I]t’s important that we protect what working families have achieved so that it’s not taken away by more government, more regulation and more taxation.”

The fact that the labor unions he just praised have long supported laws that protect workers, both union and non-union, does not trouble him.

That’s the Ben Cline we know and don’t particularly love.

Like many Congressional Republicans, Congressman Cline denounced Preisdent Biden’s Thursday speech in Philadelphia calling out Donald Trump and MAGA Republicans.

Biden said:

Now, I want to be very clear, very clear up front. Not every Republican, not even the majority of Republicans, are MAGA Republicans. Not every Republican embraces their extreme ideology. I know, because I’ve been able to work with these mainstream Republicans.

But there’s no question that the Republican Party today is dominated, driven and intimidated by Donald Trump and the MAGA Republicans. And that is a threat to this country.

Was it a scathing speech in parts? Of course. But what exactly did Biden say that was incorrect about the most extreme and dominant elements of today’s Republican party (or the Trump party, as the former president’s son thinks it should be called instead)?

What did he say that was worse than anything that “our great president Donald J. Trump” (Cline’s words) ever said?

Relax, Congressman. If you don’t think that any election Trump loses is rigged; if you don’t consider the January 6 rioters to be patriots; if you don’t think violence against the government is justified; Biden wasn’t talking about you, or about everyone who has ever voted for Trump. Do you really think he was?

To Cline’s discredit, he did everything he could to cast doubt on the election of Joe Biden as president in 2020. He joined a majority of Congressional Republicans in voting not to certify the election and has refused to put the blame for the January 6 insurrection where it clearly belongs: on Donald J. Trump.

But to Cline’s credit, he posted this on Facebook as the pro-Trump mobs were storming the U.S. Capitol and brutally assaulting police officers on January 6, 2021:

So, Congressman: now that Trump has promised full pardons to the January 6 rioters “with apologies to many” if he becomes president again, you must feel pretty foolish.

And all you can do is whine about BIDEN’S speech?

According to Congressman Cline:

Biden’s student loan debt cancellation is a handout to the coastal elites and will fall on the backs of hardworking American taxpayers who didn’t have a chance to attend college.

Cline’s attempt to play the populist card is pathetic. His voting record belies his effort to portray himself as a champion of those who haven’t attended college. The bipartisan infrastructure law on which Cline voted NO provides $800 million in dedicated funding for job training for people who don’t attend college, besides other funding for non-college workforce development.

Biden’s action will provide badly-needed relief to tens of millions of non-coastal-elite middle-income people, many of whom are the first in their families to graduate from college.

Here’s how one commenter responded to Cline’s Facebook post:

And let me assure you, Congressman: The “coastal elites,” such as they are, do not require student loans in the first place.

Congressman Cline has been telling a lot of lies about the Inflation Reduction Act, which Congressional Democrats passed last week without a single Republican vote. The new law lowers health care and prescription drug costs for Americans, invests in and provides incentives for clean energy and creates a 15 percent corporate minimum tax.

Cline’s claims about the new law raising taxes on middle-income people and on small businesses are debunked by the AP.

But his worst scaremongering comes when he tries to suggest that by increasing funding of the Internal Revenue Service, the law will create an army of IRS agents to harass and threaten ordinary taxpayers.

According to Cline:

[The] package provides $80 billion to double the size of the IRS, adding an army of 87,000 new enforcement agents to spy into Americans’ financial accounts and harass taxpayers and small businesses.

In an interview on WFIR radio, Cline raised the fearsome (and ridiculous) prospect of an army of gun-toting IRS agents oppressing ordinary Americans. But as the AP reports:

The bill will not create any such army, officials and experts say. Only some IRS employees who work on criminal investigations carry firearms as part of their work.

A division of the IRS called criminal investigation serves as the agency’s law enforcement branch. Its agents, who work on issues such as seizing illicit crypto currency and Russian oligarchs’ assets, carry weapons, [Treasury Department official Natasha] Sarin said.

There were just more than 2,000 such special agents working at the IRS in 2021, according to agency documents. The branch will get money from the Inflation Reduction Act, but the bulk of the dollars will go toward other areas, according to Sarin.

The bill does not designate money specifically for a large number of armed IRS employees.

Taxpayer services have deteriorated in recent years due to Republicans like Cline refusing to to properly fund the IRS.

So it’s ironic that Cline has complained about the backlog in taxpayer services that this law will address.

After the FBI executed a search warrant for presidential documents at Donald Trump’s home in Florida, Congressman Cline dutifully joined the chorus of Republican outrage.

On his Congressional Facebook page, he posted:

Actually, Congressman, executing a legal search warrant approved by a federal judge based on evidence of possible criminality is precisely what many third world countries do not do.

On his campaign Facebook page, Cline complained:

But never have we had a former president like Trump before– who believes that the laws which apply to everyone else do not apply to him.

As Cline certainly knows, under the Presidential Records Act, a former president may not keep in his or her personal possession any documents related to his or her presidency.

And if any of those documents are classified, it’s a felony punishable by up to five years in prison– thanks to then-President Trump.

Congressman Cline: Either you believe the law should be enforced or you don’t. Which is it?

Either you believe no one is above the law or you don’t. Which is it?

If you don’t, please don’t ever tell us again that you are on the side of law enforcement.