WASHINGTON, D.C. — Multiple Ohio legislators have been involved in work being done on Capitol Hill this week, including committees, legislation and investigations.
What You Need To Know
- The House voted Thursday to remove Minnesota Rep. Ilhan Omar from the Foreign Affairs Committee, which Rep. Max Miller spoke about
- Rep. Mike Turner hosted a virtual press conference as he again tries to pass legislation that would restore the pensions of Delphi salaried retirees
- Rep. Jim Jordan and Sen. JD Vance are not too concerned about the document scandal surrounding former President Donald Trump
The House voted Thursday to remove Minnesota Rep. Ilhan Omar from the Foreign Affairs Committee, a move Republicans wanted because of past antisemitic remarks she made. Omar apologized for them, but Republicans viewed the decision as fair after some of their GOP colleagues were removed from committees last Congress.
Rep. Max Miller (OH-7), one of just two Jewish Republicans in the House, introduced the resolution and spoke on the floor about it.
“Some have decried this effort as a political game. Mr. Speaker, I assure you this is no political game,” said Miller. “This resolution is not about engaging in a tit-for-tat with my colleagues on the other side of the aisle. This is about keeping someone with a long record of antisemitic and anti-Israel bias off of the Foreign Affairs Committee, which needs objective emissaries for our foreign policy.”
Omar responded to Miller on Twitter.
“If not being objective is a reason to not serve on committees, no one would be on committees. We vote our districts,” she said.
All Ohio Democrats voted against removing her, while nine of 10 Ohio Republicans voted for it. Rep. Dave Joyce voted “present.”
Also on Thursday, Rep. Mike Turner (R, OH-10) hosted a virtual press conference as he again tries to pass legislation that would restore the pensions of Delphi salaried retirees.
The Susan Muffley Act would restore the pensions of 20,000 Delphi salaried retirees who faced cuts after General Motors filed for bankruptcy 14 years ago. It includes more than 5,000 Ohioans who faced cuts as high as 70% from the pensions they paid into.
The bill passed the House last year, but stalled in the Senate.
“Some of it is learning curve,” Turner said. “As you know, the Delphi Salaried Retirees geographically live in a fairly concentrated area. So getting senators that have no nexus, that don’t have Delphi Salaried Retirees that live there, to understand this issue is a process.”
Turner said bailing out pensions is not always popular in Congress because it can become a huge federal liability, but he said this pension is “dead,” meaning it’s no longer accepting new members, and it was fully funded.
Along with the happenings in the House, two prominent Ohio Republicans made their opinions known on the investigation into why President Joe Biden, former President Donald Trump and former Vice President Mike Pence all had classified documents found in their possession.
Rep. Jim Jordan (R, OH-4) and Sen. JD Vance are not too concerned about the document scandal surrounding Trump. They’ve been much more critical of Biden, although Trump had more documents, and Pence also had documents.
“Only one of them was president,” Jordan said about why the three men don’t all deserve the same level of scrutiny. “I mean, the documents related to President Biden are when he was vice president and senator. The documents related to Vice President Pence were when he was vice president. The documents related to President Trump are when he was president of the United States, the ultimate authority on whether something is classified or declassified. The difference in treatment between President Trump and President Biden is astounding to me.”
Vance said the reasons behind having the documents also play a part.
“The big difference I see here, Taylor, is that what Joe Biden has done reveals a pattern of mishandling classified information over many years, over many offices, over many places,” said Vance. “This guy just seems to stash classified documents in random places. The difference here between what he was doing and what Donald Trump was doing is Donald Trump was actually having a conversation. His team was having a conversation with the National Archives about which documents were classified, about whether they had been declassified, about whether they needed to be returned. And so I think, actually, President Trump was handling this in the right way.”
Trump had more than 300 documents in his possession, including more than 100 he resisted turning over, while Biden has had 25-30 found, and Pence had a small handful.
