Sherrod Brown in Ohio 2006 Senate Debate
On Civil Rights:
Voted against the Patriot Act because it is unpatriotic
I voted against the Patriot Act. It had a lot of good things in it, but it went too far. The Patriot Act is law now, but we’ve not done what we should do in Afghanistan. We’ve not done what we should do to protect the US. Clearly the focus has been “sta
the course” in Iraq, the status quo in Iraq, and that has caused all other parts of the War on Terror-it’s undermined all other parts of the War on Terror, coupled with the fact the intelligence experts are saying the war in Iraq is making us less safe.
Source: 2006 Ohio Senate Debate on NBC Meet the Press
Oct 1, 2006
On Free Trade:
Supports fair trade; opposes exporting jobs
Q: Would you repeal NAFTA? BROWN: I would renegotiate NAFTA, as I would renegotiate PNTR with China. We’ve lost so many small businesses, as these big companies outsource. And Mike DeWine has supported every time these trade agreements that give
incentives to the big corporations.
DeWINE: When steel companies were dumping steel, we got tariffs. When a foreign country dumps into the US, we give the fine to the US companies. When it comes time to protect Ohio industries, he’s not there.
BROWN
All of us were involved in [the steel issue]. The problem is, those tariffs to protect the steel industry, they didn’t last very long. Neither of those laws that he talks about are still in effect. But I want to see more trade. I just don’t want one-way
free trade where our biggest export is jobs to Mexico & China. I want fair trade, with more exports, not this free trade that causes the kind of job loss that we’re seeing. We simply have abandoned the middle class when we passed these trade agreements.
Source: 2006 Ohio Senate Debate on NBC Meet the Press
Oct 1, 2006
On Homeland Security:
Voted every time in favor of final intelligence budgets
DEWINE: Brown voted 10 separate times to cut our intelligence spending.BROWN: You know better than making charges like that, that are just unsubstantiated.
DEWINE: The roll call was there.
BROWN: I ultimately voted every time for those
intelligence budgets. And he knows that.
DEWINE: The majority of times of those 10 times where Sherrod Brown voted to cut our intelligence spending, he was the minority even of his own party.
Source: 2006 Ohio Senate Debate on NBC Meet the Press [X-ref DeWine]
Oct 1, 2006
On Principles & Values:
Endorsed by conservative group that cares about tax fairness
The Certified Public Accountants of Ohio, a, a Republican-leaning conservative business group that cares about economic development, that cares about tax cuts for the middle class, that cares about fairness, and is a conservative Republican-leaning
group, as I said, has endorsed me. I’m the only Democrat challenger in the country that was endorsed by them. I can make a long list of bipartisan issues I worked on. My ultimate allegiance is to the middle class and working to help Ohioans.
Source: 2006 Ohio Senate Debate on NBC Meet the Press
Oct 1, 2006
On Tax Reform:
DeWine’s ads doctor WTC photos to distort my record on taxes
DeWINE: When it came time to help the middle class with tax cuts, a tax cut that has taken five million Americans off the tax rolls, that has given the average Ohioan $2,000 per year, Sherrod Brown voted no time and time again. BROWN: Mike, you know
better than that, too. His whole ad campaign is fabricated on making up stuff about taxes.
DeWINE: My ad campaign is based on votes that you cast. You just want to run from your record.
BROWN: Mike ran an ad of the World Trade Center on fire.
The problem is, he doctored the ad.
DeWINE: Have you ever denied the facts in that ad? I said there was a mistake made in the picture, but there was no mistake in the facts.
BROWN: He didn’t fire the ad agency.
Q: Was there any factual mistake?
BROWN: Well, other than doctoring a photo?
Q: Well, you made that point.
BROWN: That’s a pretty important point.
DeWINE: He won’t answer the question. The facts are correct.
Source: 2006 Ohio Senate Debate on NBC Meet the Press (X-ref DeWine)
Oct 1, 2006
On War & Peace:
Instruct the military to come up with a withdrawal plan
Q: You’re opposed to the war, but what specifically do you do now? A: We pressure. We force. We push the Iraqis to build the security forces, the military and the police security forces that they need to build. DeWine and
Bush are just saying “status quo, just stay the course.” They’re not advocating any real change. They’ve been saying for three years that things were doing well. They clearly haven’t really made any real changes in what we’re doing in Iraq.
Once we push them in a serious way, we push them and pressure them to compromise-the Iraqis, the Sunnis and the Shiites-and we say to the military, we instruct the military that we want to exit
Iraq within a year and a half to two years, specifically at what speed, and that the troops exit Iraq in the most orderly and safe way for Americans.
Source: 2006 Ohio Senate Debate on NBC Meet the Press
Oct 1, 2006
On War & Peace:
Iraq has distracted the War on Terror and made us less safe
The fundamental difference on the war on terror since 9/11 is the US has lost its focus. Look what’s happened in Afghanistan. The Taliban is stronger than it’s been at any time in five years. We know that more poppies are grown to 95% of the poppies
in the world are grown in Afghanistan. We’re not supporting a moderate democratic government as well as we should in Afghanistan. Then it’s not just in Afghanistan that we’ve lost our focus, that’s caused al-Qaeda to be stronger.
Go look at what we’ve done in the US. We’ve failed to protect our nuclear facilities, our water systems, and our chemical plants. We tell our grandmothers to take their shoes off at the airport, yet we inspect fewer than 10% of cargo containers that
come into our ports, that come across I-70 in the heart of Ohio, that come across the turnpike in I-90. The intelligence operation in this country coupled with the loss of focus because of the war in Iraq has made the US less safe.
Source: 2006 Ohio Senate Debate on NBC Meet the Press
Oct 1, 2006
On War & Peace:
Voted against $87 billion that went to Halliburton
Q: Why did vote against $87 billion to fund the war in 2003? A: Because there was a better way to do it. Much of that $87 billion went to Halliburton and Bechtel and Parsons, and there was no accountability. It was a blank check. I wanted the money to go
to the troops for body armor. I spoke out on body armor over and over, questioned people like administrator Paul Bremer. DeWine should be ashamed of himself for running ads on television saying that I voted against the $87 billion.
Source: 2006 Ohio Senate Debate on NBC Meet the Press
Oct 1, 2006
Page last updated: Feb 20, 2019