The sign stayed put

Among the visitors to the Lexington-Rockbridge-Buena Vista Democrats’ booth at the Rockbridge Community Festival on Saturday was Congressman Cline.

Although Cline greeted us volunteers politely, he dodged questions about when he might hold another town hall meeting in the Sixth District. (His last town hall was in November 2024.) Asked when the next town hall will be, he said he would let us know.

He also complained about a sign at our booth calling out his vote for Trump’s “Big Beautiful Bill.” He said it was untrue.

However:

The Congressional Budget Office estimates that the BBB will increase the number of Americans without health insurance by 10 million by 2034, due largely to cuts of almost $1 trillion in Medicaid.

The Center for Medicare Advocacy reports that several provisions of the BBB directly target Medicare beneficiaries, including:

• New Restrictions on Lawfully Present Immigrants

• Blocking Improvements to Medicare Savings Programs

• Blocking Nursing Home Staffing Standards

• Limiting Medicare’s Ability to Negotiate Drug Prices

Cline said we should remove the sign.

We didn’t.

Cline goes along with Trump’s tariff fantasy

Congressman Cline thinks Donald Trump deserves praise for negotiating these dubious “trade deals.”

But before we join Cline in the accolades, here are some inconvenient facts to consider:

– U.S. administration claims historic tariff hikes and trade deals with EU, Japan, Philippines, but lacks detailed agreements or written documentation.

– Partners dispute U.S. claims of investment commitments, with EU clarifying zero-tariff benefits apply only to limited products like aircraft.

– Japan’s 5.5 trillion yen investment pledge faces ambiguity over profit-sharing ratios and funding structure, described as “loans and investments” without specifics.

– Vietnam and Indonesia reject U.S. tariff claims while disputing mineral export commitments, highlighting gaps between administration statements and partner confirmations.

– Lack of transparency risks undermining party unity and corporate trust, as key provisions remain unverified and negotiations on critical sectors continue.

And sorry, Congressman. All of these “deals” involve increases in tariffs on products imported from these countries– meaning, ultimately, higher prices for American consumers, especially those least able to afford them. Your Sixth District constituents are not exempt.

Although businesses have so far absorbed the brunt of new tariffs, by covering higher costs themselves or relying on earlier stockpiles of inventory to keep them going, that is quickly changing. Major retailers, including Costco, Williams-Sonoma and Target, that loaded up on products earlier in the year are beginning to deplete those reserves, analysts say.

…..

Walmart, the country’s largest retailer, has begun marking up baby gear, kitchenware and toys. Nike is raising prices on some of its shoes, and many others are beginning to warn consumers that price increases are around the corner. Procter & Gamble, the maker of Tide laundry detergent, Pampers diapers and Oral-B toothbrushes, said it would start raising prices in August on some products by about 2.5 percent to help offset $1 billion in tariff costs this year.

And finally, Congressman: please read Article 1, Section 8 of the US Constitution, which clearly grants Congress, not the President, the authority to set tariffs. Even if it had been cut out of the original at the National Archives, you would be able to find it in the copy you claim to carry with you everywhere you go.

Cline’s sad, naive faith in DOGE

Congressman Cline continues to heap praise on Elon Musk’s (remember him?) Department of Government Efficiency by uncritically regurgitating DOGE’s claims of supposedly massive savings.

There are reasons to be extremely skeptical. CBS News reports:

The DOGE website reports a grand total of $199  billion saved, when factoring in real estate lease cancellations and other cuts such as personnel reductions. However, it provides no documentation for roughly half of that amount. According to DOGE, the savings equate to $1,236.02 per person in the U.S.

According to Nat Malkus, a senior fellow at the conservative-leaning American Enterprise Institute, “The amount they have per person is fiction. It’s transparency theater.”

A substantial portion of those purported savings is a result of cuts to USAID. A recent study in the medical journal The Lancet says those cuts could come with a human toll. By the study’s estimates, the loss in humanitarian aid could lead to 14 million deaths in children younger than 5 years of age by 2030.

But even if we accept the $199 billion in savings as accurate (which we shouldn’t), that would still be less than 10 percent of the $2 trillion in savings that Cline strangely considered a realistic possibility last November.

In fact it’s possible that DOGE will end up costing the government more money than it saves.

It would be nice to get some answers from Cline about this (and many other things). If we can find him.

Waynesboro provides free school meals which Cline tried to block

The Waynesboro, Virginia, public schools will provide free breakfasts and lunches to all students without requiring applications from parents.

If Congressman Cline had his way, this would have been illegal.

Last year the House Republican Study Committee, of which Cline is a leading member, introduced a budget that would ban universal free school meals.

The budget — co-signed by more than 170 House Republicans — calls to eliminate “the Community Eligibility Provision (CEP) from the School Lunch Program.” The CEP, the Republicans note, “allows certain schools to provide free school lunches regardless of the individual eligibility of each student.” 

“Additionally,” the Republicans continue, “the RSC Budget would limit spending in the program to truly needy households.”

The CEP allows schools and districts in low-income areas to provide breakfast and lunch to all students, free of charge. The program thus relieves both schools and families from administrative paperwork, removing the inefficiencies and barriers of means-testing, all on the pathway to feeding more children and lifting all boats.

As I wrote at the time:

It’s ironic that Cline– who regularly rails against excessive government bureaucracy and regulations– wants to require families to prove they are “truly needy” before their kids can get free meals at school.

…..

And of course, universal free school meals eliminate the hurtful divisions between children whose families can and can’t afford to pay.

Well done to the Waynesboro public schools– which will be keeping all kids fed regardless of parents’ income and despite Cline’s disapproval.

GOP state senator: Cline-backed bill creates a “foreboding fear”

Chris Head is the Republican state senator representing all of Alleghany County, Botetourt County, Craig County, Rockbridge County, Buena Vista, Covington, Lexington, Staunton, Waynesboro and parts of Augusta County and Roanoke County.

This “foreboding fear” was created by passage of “Big Beautiful Bill” that Congressman Cline enthusiastically supported.

Number of town hall meetings that Cline has scheduled so far to hear concerns from his constituents during the current six-week House recess: 0.

Cline-backed cut threatens vital information source for constituents

After Congressman Cline voted with other House Republicans to eliminate federal funding for public broadcasting and to cut foreign aid, he posted this on his X account.

According to the Center for American Progress:

The roughly $8.3 billion in targeted [foreign aid] accounts support U.S. responses to conflict, hunger, disease, and democratic decline—all core tools for advancing American interests and global stability. 

So it’s likely that countless people in other countries will suffer and die as a result of these cuts.

As for the elimination of funds for public broadcasting, that hits a lot closer to home.

Allegheny Mountain Radio is a network of three public radio stations serving Pocahontas County in West Virginia and Bath and Highland Counties in Virginia. Bath and Highland are part of the Sixth Congressional District represented by Cline.

Like many rural public broadcasters, AMR lacks the large and relatively affluent donor base of urban public stations. So AMR depends on federal funding to cover more than 60 percent of its budget.

With that revenue source (which Cline calls “wasteful”) gone, it’s doubtful that AMR will be able to continue serving its rural listeners.

[General manager Scott] Smith says the radio cooperative helps knit together a region where it isn’t easy to connect because of the mountains and the spotty access to phone and internet. Much of its coverage area lies inside the Monongahela and George Washington and Jefferson National forests. During a nearly 75-mile drive from an interstate to WVMR, which sits in Dunmore, W. Va., an NPR reporter had no internet connection.

Some people here say they really value the news and community information Allegheny Mountain provides. Jay Garber, mayor of the town of Monterey, Va., says the radio remains the fastest way to let citizens know about everything from water main breaks to road closures.

“It’s our only source of local, daily information,” says Garber, sitting in his office along Main Street. “We have a newspaper that’s printed once a week, so without the radio station, we’re kind of in the blind here, locally.”

By voting to undercut a source of vital information for his constituents, Cline has once again proved his utter contempt for the people he purports to represent.

Cline: “Don’t look here! Look there!”

Donald Trump recently forgot that he appointed Jerome Powell as chairman of the Federal Reserve.

And Trump continues to show signs of mental confusion (to put it politely) almost every time he opens his mouth.

And of course there’s the whole Jeffrey Epstein business.

But Congressman Cline thinks we should focus instead on the previous president rather than the current one.

I can’t imagine why. Can you?

Cline’s sudden concern for water quality

Based on his voting record, Congressman Cline has never been a champion of clean and safe drinking water or any other environmental protections.

So it was interesting to learn that there is one issue on which he purports to be a staunch environmentalist. Cline joined Republican colleagues in Congress “urging the Environmental Protection Agency to investigate the environmental and public health risks of the abortion drug mifepristone, warning that its chemical byproducts may be contaminating the nation’s water supply.”

In January, Politico reported:

A cadre of red and purple states is introducing bills this week to impose restrictions on abortion pills over claims that the drugs could be contaminating drinking water.

The new legislation in Arizona, Idaho, Maine, West Virginia and Wyoming — which would require doctors who prescribe abortion pills to make their patients collect and return their expelled fetuses in medical waste bags for disposal — is the latest development in anti-abortion groups’ yearslong campaign to wield environmental laws to cut off access to the drugs.

…..

“This is not because the environment was my first weapon of choice — it’s because it’s the one we have now,” Kristi Hamrick, the vice president of Students for Life of America, said at the group’s annual conference on Saturday. She added that after decades of pushing for new restrictions on abortion by approaching state and federal lawmakers saying, “Please, please pass this law to help us. Pretty please with sugar on top?” she and her fellow abortion opponents landed on this strategy.

“Environmental law has teeth. It already exists,” she stressed. “And, frankly, I’m for using the devil’s own tools against them.”

…..

Multiple environmental health experts, including toxicologists and experts in emerging water contaminants, say there is no evidence that mifepristone is present in the nation’s waterways at concerning levels. And, in the last week of the Biden administration, the FDA’s experts rejected a citizen petition from Students for Life that demanded the agency roll back access to the pills while the government studies their environmental impact.

“The petition offers only conjecture that remnants of mifepristone in the nation’s water system are ‘causing unknown harm to citizens and animals alike,’” the FDA found earlier this month, noting that Students for Life’s 2023 petition itself “provides no evidence showing that bodily fluid from patients who have used mifepristone (a one-time, single-dose product) is causing harm to the nation’s aquatic environment.”

So Cline is latching onto a phony “concern” about mifepristone to try and advance his pro-forced birth agenda, while voting NO on the PFAS Action Act, which would crack down on the use of a class of chemicals known as PFAS found in drinking water.

The Keck School of Medicine reported in January:

Communities exposed to drinking water contaminated with manufactured chemicals known as per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) experience up to a 33% higher incidence of certain cancers, according to new research from the Keck School of Medicine of USC.

The study, funded by the National Institutes of Health and just published in the Journal of Exposure Science and Environmental Epidemiology, is the first to examine cancer and PFAS contamination of drinking water in the U.S.

Given the Trump administration’s wrecking-ball approach to medical research, I can’t help wondering how many more such studies it will continue to fund.

Congressman Cline: Your boundless hypocrisy is showing again.