Because he usually ignores my messages to him, I was rather surprised to receive a letter from Congressman Cline responding to an email I wrote to him about his three recent “under the radar” votes against common-sense bills approved by the House majority.

Perhaps enough other constituents contacted him about these votes that he felt compelled to produce a form-letter response. (If anyone else received the same letter, please let me know.)

Thank you for contacting my office regarding several bills that recently passed the House of Representatives. I appreciate hearing from you on these important topics.

As you may know, H.R. 4344 would increase the time during which the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) could recover illegal profits from defendants from five years to 14 years after an alleged securities violation. This bill would drastically expand the power of the SEC and would retroactively change limitations in the law. This bill passed the House on November 19, 2019 and has been received in the Senate for further consideration.

What’s wrong with extending the power of the SEC to go after people who commit fraud against ordinary investors? Some of those investors might be your constituents.

H.R. 737 would place a federal ban on the buying and selling of shark fins in the United States. The shark fishing industry is already heavily regulated, and the practice of shark finning is already explicitly outlawed in U.S. territorial waters. On November 21, 2019, H.R. 737 passed the House, and it now awaits further consideration in the Senate.

So sharks outside US territorial waters don’t deserve to be protected from mutilation and needless death?

H.R. 1309 would require healthcare and social service employers to implement a workplace violence prevention plan. The bill mandates one-size-fits-all regulation based on a California policy that does not account for the individuality of states, communities, and individual workplaces. This bill passed the House on November 21, 2019 and has been received in the Senate.

Protecting healthcare and social service workers from workplace violence is vital regardless of “the individuality of states, communities, and individual workplaces.” Violence is violence anywhere, and it needs to be taken equally seriously everywhere.

It is an honor to represent you and all of Virginia’s Sixth Congressional District in the United States House of Representatives. Please do not hesitate to contact me if I can be of further assistance. To receive the latest updates from my office, I encourage you to sign up for my e-newsletter at cline.house.gov or like my Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.

Sincerely,

Ben Cline
Member of Congress

Congressman, it may or may not be an honor to represent me, but having followed your activities closely since you were sworn in as my representative in January, I can’t say it’s an honor to be represented by you.

Taking a break from repeating dubious Republican talking points and finally voting “no” in the House Judiciary Committee on both articles of impeachment against President Trump , Congressman Cline joined almost all Republicans to vote once again against the interests of his constituents.

Sharpening their 2020 election message, House Democrats on Thursday pushed through legislation that would empower Medicare to negotiate prescription drug prices and offer new benefits for seniors. The vote comes as the House Judiciary Committee considers articles of impeachment against the president.

The vote along party lines was 230 to 192. Two Republicans supported the bill.

Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s bill would cap Medicare recipients’ out-of-pocket costs for medicines at $2,000 a year. It would use about $360 billion of its projected 10-year savings from lower drug costs to establish Medicare coverage for dental care, hearing, and vision, filling major gaps for seniors.

According to the the Department of Health and Human Services, the bill would save consumers $158 billion over 10 years.

The bill is strongly opposed by the pharmaceutical industry, which donates huge amounts to the Congressional campaigns of both Democrats and Republicans– although Republicans get more.

Big Pharma claims that requiring companies to negotiate prices (something that President Trump was for before he was against it) will stifle innovation of new drugs.

But as a New York Times editorial notes:

[T]hese fatal predictions ignore some obvious facts. First, innovation is already being thwarted under the current system, which skews heavily toward some types of drug development and away from others. For example, there are huge incentives to bring certain new cancer drugs to market, even when those drugs have little impact on survival rates, but comparatively few incentives to develop antibiotics or treatments for diseases that predominantly affect low-income communities — both of which are urgently needed.

Second, drug companies that are concerned about their research budgets dwindling have options. They might consider trimming the generally outsize amount of money they spend on advertising. Or they could look to the generous tax breaks they have secured in recent years — as Axios and others have reported, much of the pharmaceutical industry’s 2017 windfall went to stock dividends and share buybacks, not research and development. Even the Health and Human Services secretary, Alex Azar, a former pharmaceutical executive, has called the drug industry’s projections of innovation loss “mathematically unbelievable.”

I hope Congressman Cline will have a chance to explain his vote to the thousands of low-income seniors and others in the Sixth District who struggle with prescription drug costs and would benefit from an expansion of Medicare to cover dental, hearing and vision services.

Larry Sabato, director of the Center for Politics at the University of Virginia, updates for another deficient Republican the famous comeback by Lloyd Bentsen to Dan Quayle in the 1988 Vice Presidential candidates’ debate.

Congressman Cline has sometimes cited one of his Sixth District predecessors, Republican Caldwell Butler, while neglecting to mention that Butler had the courage and integrity to support impeachment of Richard Nixon, a president of his own party.

A respondent adds a relevant quote from Butler which ought to make Cline pause and think but, of course, won’t.

 

Congressman Cline again embarrassed himself and his constituents with his effort to downplay the overwhelming evidence against President Trump at a House Judiciary Committee hearing on impeachment Monday.

Fortunately he was followed immediately by Democratic Congresswoman Sylvia Garcia of Texas, a former judge, who helped to systematically refute everything Cline had to say about “hearsay” and lack of “direct evidence.”

You can watch Congressman Cline’s petulant performance at Wednesday’s House Judiciary Committee impeachment hearing below. It’s another reminder that he is putting blind loyalty to President Trump above any effort to uncover or deal with actual facts.

As usual, Cline refuses to address the massive evidence of Trump’s abuse of power, but rather complains about the supposed lack of evidence– some of which might be remedied by Trump allowing the release of subpoenaed documents and the testimony of subpoenaed witnesses.

Cline seems to suggest that impeachment of a president is never justified under any circumstances, because there is always another election. This raises the question of why the Founding Fathers included it in the Constitution in the first place.

Cline claims to carry a copy of the Constitution with him at all times. He might want to pull it out some time and read Article 1, Section 2, which gives the House of Representatives “the sole power of impeachment” and Article 2, Section 4, which says: “The President, Vice President and all civil officers of the United States, shall be removed from office on impeachment for, and conviction of, treason, bribery, or other high crimes and misdemeanors.”

Finally, Cline doesn’t even bother to question any of the witnesses and instead yields to another Republican congressman.

A poor show all around, Congressman.

 

 

The Daily Beast reports:

Fox News anchor Sandra Smith asked Rep. Ben Cline (R-VA) on Monday morning about the “big difference in the look and feel of the hearing happening on Wednesday compared to the 31 hours we saw before the Intel Committee. Chairman Jerry Nadler has a very different style than Adam Schiff, chairman of the Intel committee. What do you expect from him and how he will lead this hearing on Wednesday?”

“We had Star Wars—the Empire got destroyed just like the Mueller report got destroyed,” the Republican lawmaker declared. “The sequel is here. It’s The Empire Strikes Back, or as we like to say, ‘The Intelligence Committee strikes back, Adam Schiff strikes back.’ We all know how the story ends.”

The conservative congressman insisted that the Trump administration are the heroes, i.e., the Rebel Alliance, of this real-life saga, thus implying that the president would be Luke Skywalker—a commander of Rebel forces—in this analogy.

“The rebels win,” Cline concluded. “Ultimately the president will be exonerated and we don’t anticipate any reason to go forward with these hearings.”

The actor who portrayed Luke Skywalker has a different Star Wars character in mind.

Cline’s statement that Trump will be exonerated suggests that he has no interest in hearing or seeing the evidence. He has consistently declined to discuss the actual allegations against Trump.

Trump was watching his favorite network, and tweeted his appreciation for Cline’s sycophancy.

“Thank you to Congressman Ben @Cline4Virginia for the Great remarks this morning on the illegitimate Impeachment Hoax,” the president wrote. “He understands the Do Nothing Democrats very well.”

Cline was then asked how often the question of impeachment has come up on his visits to the Sixth District. For whatever reason, he didn’t answer the question but again talked about how unfair he considers the process.

 

Congressman Cline has emailed his supporters asking them to donate to the reelection campaign of Congresswoman Elise Stefanik of New York.

Cline wrote:

Did you see Adam Schiff’s attempts last week to silence Republican Congresswoman Elise Stefanik during his impeachment hearing in the Intelligence Committee? The Democrats are completely throwing out the rule book in order to tip the scales in their impeachment circus.

In fact, as Monica Hesse of The Washington Post explained:

Early in the afternoon, Rep. Devin Nunes (Calif.), the Republican ranking member of the intelligence committee, attempted to yield some of his time to Stefanik. This attempt, however, violated a House resolution: Only ranking members and their staff counsel were allowed to speak at that moment. So when Stefanik began a question, Schiff gaveled over her.

“What is the interruption for this time?” Stefanik asked witheringly. Schiff explained, and then, when Stefanik again spoke, he again cut her off.

Nunes got involved: “You’re gagging the young lady from New York?” he fumed, in an interesting turn of phrase. Stefanik is 35 — hardly elderly, but well beyond the age to which “young lady” is reasonably applied.

In other words, Schiff wasn’t “throwing out the rule book”; he was following the rules.

Cline continued:

Not only was Elise mistreated by Adam Schiff, but Democrats used the opportunity to spread a vulgar, photo-shopped picture of her to raise money for her opponent.

Now, in this past week over $1.5 million dollars has been raised to replace Elise with a pro-impeachment Democrat — we can’t let this happen!

I stand with Elise, and I am coming to her aid! I’m asking you to help. Can you rush in $15, $35, or $45 today to help Congresswoman Elise Stefanik counter the smear campaign of the radical Left?

The reference is to a faked photo of Stefanik making a rude hand gesture. Although it was shared on social media, I can find no evidence that any prominent Democrats disseminated it. Among those who did share it on Twitter it was George Conway, an anti-Trump Republican who is not a member of the radical Left. He deleted the tweet when the photo was revealed as phony.

George Conway is the husband of President Trump’s adviser Kellyanne Conway.

Stefanik has opposed Trump on a number of issues, including immigration, the border wall, tariffs and taxes. But since the impeachment inquiry began, she has become a fierce defender of Trump, pledging to help “save America from socialism!” This has made her a favorite of Trumpist Republicans like Cline and she has drawn praise from Trump himself.

Stefanik’s Democratic opponent in the 2020 election is Tedra Cobb.

Last week Congressman Cline cast three votes in the House of Representatives which– in the rush of other news– most of his constituents missed, but which deserve attention and follow-up inquiries from residents of the Sixth District.

Cline voted “no” on three measures approved by the House majority. They are:

• HR 4344: The Investor Protection and Capital Markets Fairness Act. This bill would “help the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) hold criminals accountable and help Main Street investors who are victims of fraud recover their financial losses.”

Republican Congressman Bill Huizenga, one of the bill’s sponsors, said it “strikes a delicate balance to solve this by ensuring the SEC has the necessary tools to go after bad actors and prevent these sophisticated fraudsters from keeping the money they have stolen from our teachers, military service personnel, seniors, and religious-affiliated groups.”

• HR 737: The Shark Fin Sales Elimination Act. This bill would “prohibit the sale, purchase, and possession of shark fins in the United States, helping to curb an inhumane global trade that claims the lives of 73 million sharks each year.”

Shark finning is a cruel practice that entails cutting off a shark’s fins—often while the shark is still alive—and throwing the mutilated body in the ocean, where the helplessly immobile shark will suffocate, bleed to death, or succumb to an attack by a predator.

Combined with Cline’s vote against a measure aimed at eliminating the cruel practice of soring horses, this raises serious doubts about his commitment to animal welfare.

• HR 1309: The Workplace Violence Prevention for Health Care and Social Service Workers Act. This bill would “provide employers one year to develop a provisional plan for protecting health care workers, and 42 months to develop and implement a final plan for investigating incidents of violence, educating staff on risk management, meeting specific recording requirements, and creating a safe space for health care workers to report acts of violence or threats.”

The measure followed rising attention to the dangers many health professionals face just by showing up at work. Over 75 percent of the 25,000 workplace assaults reported annually in the United States took place in hospitals and other health care and social services settings, according to data from the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA). The average health care worker was 20 percent more likely to experience violence at work than the average employee, according to the National Crime Victimization Survey, while the American Nurses Association reported that 1 in 4 nurses had been physically assaulted by a patient or a patient’s family member.

I have written to Congressman Cline asking why he voted against these important protections. I will report any response I receive.

WSET TV in Lynchburg recently featured the heart-wrenching story of Randy Harlow, a 68-year-old man trying to find suitable care and accommodations for his 90-year-old mother.

“Mom is totally dependent at this point for everything, her clothing her bathing her eating,” says Harlow.

Harlow’s mother depends on Medicare, and her condition has made it extremely difficult for Harlow to find affordable options to meet her special needs.

“We know there are tons of gaps were are seeing, or cracks in the system and a lot of people are falling through that,” says Denise Scruggs, the director of the Beard Center on Aging at the University of Lynchburg. “We’re seeing either you have the money to pay or you have nothing, or most of us, which I think is going to be the bulk of us, are going to be right in between where we don’t make enough to provide the care that I need or that our loved one needs, but we don’t qualify in either way to be able to handle that,” says Scruggs.

When WSET asked local members of Congress for their reactions to the report, Congressman Cline responded:

“When we have limited dollars being spread to able-bodied working adults like Medicaid expansion it’s a problem so we do need to reform health care, the Republicans do have a plan that we are unveiling through the republican study committee.”

What is Cline trying to say? That Medicaid expansion– by making it possible for hundreds of thousands of low-income working Virginians without health insurance to finally obtain it– is the reason that people like Randy Harlow struggle to find decent care for elderly parents?

As for the Republican plan, it has already been released and is basically a repackaged version of the GOP’s 2017 health care bill to replace the Affordable Care Act which Congress failed to pass– a bill which would have reduced the number of insured by 24 million.

Fortune magazine reports:

House Democrats held their first public hearing in the impeachment inquiry into President Donald Trump Wednesday, with acting ambassador to Ukraine Bill Taylor telling a live television audience that Trump asked about Ukraine’s “investigations” into the Bidens during a phone call with Gordon Sondland, U.S. ambassador to the European Union.

Taylor further testified that Trump cared more about “the investigations” that the diplomat said were pushed by the president’s personal lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, than Ukraine. Taylor said that he was told about the call by a member of his staff.

…..

Meanwhile, several Republicans dismissed the revelation without answering to the substance of Taylor’s revelation. “In court that would be called hearsay, and that’s pretty much what most of the testimony in intelligence has been, is second-and third-degree hearsay,” Rep. Ben Cline (R-Va.) told Fortune, referring to the House Intelligence Committee. 

For Republicans, however, the “hearsay” defense will likely only last for so long. Sondland is scheduled to testify on November 20. And during the hearing Wednesday, House investigators called the aide who overheard the call, David Holmes, to testify behind closed doors on Friday. Both witnesses will almost certainly be asked about the call and what they heard Trump say, should they testify as scheduled.

As Cline surely knows, the rules for a Congressional hearing are not the same as for a criminal trial.

And if Cline is so concerned about “second-and third-degree hearsay,” shouldn’t he be demanding testimony from some of the people with first-hand information– including Mick Mulvaney, Mike Pompeo, John Bolton and Trump himself?

But OK, Congressman. Let’s imagine for a moment that the phone call occurred as Ambassador Taylor described, and that future witnesses confirm it.

Will you then finally address the substance of what Taylor and the other witnesses have testified to?