What You Need to Know: Tim Ryan

Who is Tim Ryan? It’s a fair question to ask considering how many times Ohio’s Democratic nominee for Senate has reinvented himself over the years.

During the 2022 Senate primary, Ryan branded himself as an independent voice for voters. Earlier Wednesday morning, he bragged to CNN about having a “long record of fighting against Democrats.”

But a closer look at his record shows that he has consistently fallen in line with party leadership and has even flip-flopped his views on certain issues to do so.

Ryan’s record is littered with examples of appealing to the party’s most extreme ends, including support for Medicare for All, opposing middle class tax cuts, and an abortion flip-flop that appeased an inflexible Democrat base.

Ryan was an original co-sponsor of the Medicare for All Act, the activist-endorsed government takeover of health care proposal introduced by Rep. Jayapal in 2019. The idea was a centerpiece of numerous unsuccessful presidential campaigns.

Politico: “The bill, H.R. 1384, would all but end private insurance and regulate hospitals in a vastly different way, dramatically changing operators’ business model and costing community hospitals as much as $151 billion a year, according to one estimate published in JAMA.”

Ryan’s support of Medicare for All is sure to please progressive leader Rep. Ocasio-Cortez, who he has voted with 95% of the time since she entered Congress. And his votes against tax cuts for the middle class are sure to similarly appeal to progressives at the expense of every day Ohioans.

Americans for Tax Reform: “826,160 Ohio households are benefitting from the TCJA’s doubling of the child tax credit.

“Every income group in every Ohio congressional district received a tax cut. Nationwide, a typical family of four received a $2,000 annual tax cut and a single parent with one child received a $1,300 annual tax cut.

“4,139,650 Ohio households are benefitting from the TCJA’s doubling of the standard deduction. Thanks to the tax cuts, nine out of ten households take the standard deduction which provides tax relief and simplifies the tax filing process.”

Ryan will also have to contend with a clear flip-flop from being a pro-life member of Congress to a pro-abortion one. In 2015, after years of running as a pro-life candidate, Ryan switched to being pro-abortion.

The Plain Dealer: “During Ryan’s first term in Congress, he voted for anti-abortion priorities with enough regularity that the National Right to Life Committee said he voted its way 72 percent of the time.”

The Hill: “A key pro-life Democrat in the House predicted on Tuesday a compromise on abortion restrictions in a final healthcare bill. Rep. Tim Ryan (D-Ohio), the lawmaker who crafted the legislative language during the committee process on health reform, said he expects to strike a deal between his provisions and the more stringent rules on federal funding for abortions offered by Rep. Bart Stupak (D-Mich.).”

Bottom line: Tim Ryan is a career politician who has and always will do whatever Joe Biden and Chuck Schumer tell him to. It’s no wonder his primary campaign resulted in a major enthusiasm gap among Democrats.