Ben Cline Owes Sixth District Voters Straight Answers

I served as a legislative assistant to the late Senator Frank R. Lautenberg (D-NJ).   I assisted the Senator in the writing and enactment of the Uniform Minimum Drinking Age Act of 1984 making 21 the legal drinking age in every state.  In that capacity, I worked with the leadership and membership of Mothers Against Drunk Driving (MADD).  I continued my associated with MADD after I left the Senator’s staff.

One of the strongest supporters of the 21 bill was Congressman Frank Wolf, who represented Warren County.

MADD’s cause of reducing alcohol-related deaths on our highways and addressing the needs of the victims of drunk driving was a bipartisan effort.  Drunk drivers do not ask for your voter registration card before they injure or kill you.  Over the years, Democrats like Lautenberg and Republicans like President Ronald Reagan supported MADD.

Building on the success of the 21 bill, MADD sought to lower the tolerance for drinking and driving by lowering the definition of “drunk” from .10 BAC (blood alcohol content) to .08, which was the law in many states, including Virginia.  Rep. Nita Lowey (D-NY) sponsored the .08 bill in the House, and Lautenberg sponsored it in the Senate.

The .08 bill easily passed the Senate with bipartisan support.

As a MADD representative, I asked a House Republican from New York to support Lowey’s bill.  That member said “no” because Lowey was a Democrat.  It was the first time I had heard opposition to a MADD initiative based on political considerations.

Things had changed in the House of Representatives.  Newt Gingrich was now Speaker, and Democrats were no longer treated as colleagues but as enemies.

The bill never reached the House floor.  However, in a subsequent Congress, Senator Lautenberg and Congressman Wolf added the .08 provision to an appropriations bill, and it became law.

Looking back on my experience with the New York Republican, I must say that I admired their honesty.  There was no effort to tell me what I wanted to hear.  It was just “no.”

Politicians often go to great lengths to avoid saying “no.”

Early in the COVID crisis, House Democrats brought a bill to the House floor to aid families.  I wrote to my Congressman, Ben Cline, and asked for his support.  He wrote back and said he did not support the bill, which passed with broad bipartisan support, because it was long and he did not have a chance to read it. I would have preferred it if he had just said he opposed the measure because it came from the Democrats.

Ben Cline’s answer to me would leave you with the impression that Members of Congress sit in their offices reading the legislation that comes before the House.  Anyone who has worked on the Hill knows that reading bills is what personal and support staff do; otherwise, why do they get paid?

I wasn’t dismayed by Mr. Cline’s opposition to the aid bill because he was a Republican; I was dismayed that he wasn’t being honest with me.

Ben Cline does not want to be held accountable for his votes in Congress.  He refuses to debate his opponent.  He doesn’t want to explain what he has done or failed to do to lower the cost of gas and groceries.  He tells us he agreed to candidate forums, knowing full well that forums, where his views will not be challenged, are, in fact, debates where they would be challenged.  Forums are not debates, and Ben Cline knows it.

Ben Cline does not want to debate because he doesn’t want Beth Macy to be anything other than “my opponent.”  Ben Cline shouldn’t lose this election because he is a Republican but because he is not leveling with the voters of the 6^th District.  He’s being a politician and a dishonest one at that.

Tom Howarth
Front Royal, VA

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