Saturday, October 16, 2004
Senator keeps eye on economy
Favored for re-election, Voinovich gives his views
By Jim Siegel
Enquirer Columbus Bureau
COLUMBUS - The man who has pretty much done it all in Ohio politics is ready to do it at least one more time.
U.S. Sen. George Voinovich, 68, began his political career in 1966 a Republican running in and winning a state House district that leaned 64 percent Democratic.
Now, after stints as Cuyahoga County auditor, county commissioner, Cleveland mayor and Ohio governor, Voinovich is favored to retain his Senate seat over Democratic state Sen. Eric Fingerhut, 45, of Shaker Heights.
Ohio today is not the one Voinovich remembers as governor, when it was creating jobs and expanding plants in the 1990s. Rather, Ohio's unemployment rate remains higher than the national average, as it has lost more than 230,000 jobs since 2001, most of those in manufacturing.
"We're always the first to get sick and the last to get better," Voinovich said. "But things are improving."
To aid that improvement, Voinovich is pushing for stricter enforcement of trade policies with China, which, he said, is manipulating its currency.
That manipulation makes its own products cheaper. China also steals product designs from U.S. companies, he said.
"I basically told the (Bush) administration that until I'm satisfied that you are really aggressively enforcing these laws and have the capacity to get the job done, I'm not going to support any more trade agreements," he said.
The United States also must develop an energy policy that makes better use of the nation's resources and ultimately lowers costs for business, he said.
He says Fingerhut, his opponent, is "trying to solve today's problems with old solutions," and accuses him of being a captive of radical environmentalists.
"I'm an environmentalist. No one has done more for Lake Erie than George Voinovich," he said, adding that the country must find harmony between the environment and economy.
Stopping the use of coal, he argues, will kill manufacturing jobs.
He has seen the effect of manufacturing losses in Cleveland's Collinwood neighborhood, where he grew up and still lives.
The modest, two-story home is in an area where you might not expect to find a U.S. senator, but he notes that he and Janet, his wife of 42 years, "have always tried to live below our means, not above it."
Voinovich defies the silver-spoon image of many U.S. senators.
"I grew up in a working-class, middle-class neighborhood in a family with six kids and a school with all kinds of ethnic groups," he said. "I think that gives you an insight into people. It gives me special eyes other guys in the Senate don't have."
Voinovich recalled one debate over the extension of unemployment benefits, which he supported. Some colleagues argued that if benefits were extended, people may never go back to work.
"I told them, 'You're crazy. Have you ever seen an unemployed worker?'"
Voinovich didn't always have eyes on public office. Growing up he wanted to be a doctor, a desire stemming from his own medical experience, until he got to high school and realized he and science didn't mix.
As a toddler he developed osteomyelitis, a bone marrow disease that can be fatal. He said a doctor used a creative procedure to save his life and save his ability to walk.
Voinovich wonders if in today's legal environment a doctor would be willing to take the same chance on a child today.
He draws on the story when talking about his desire to enact federal laws that would protect doctors from frivolous lawsuits and large jury awards. The law, known as tort reform, would cap jury awards in those cases.
The senator says he's heard too many stories of doctors leaving Ohio, doctors quitting certain high-risk fields, and Ohio's best young minds choosing to avoid the medical field because of skyrocketing malpractice insurance costs.
"I really believe that if we don't do something about this problem soon, we will have done irreparable damage to health care in this state," he said.
He defends the new Medicare prescription drug program - a plan Fingerhut says needs to be all-but-scrapped. Although Voinovich is not happy that some cost estimates were kept hidden from Congress, when fully implemented in 2006 it will provide drug coverage for about 650,000 more Ohioans, he said.
"The other thing you've got to ask Eric is, what is going to take its place? We've got people dying today in America," Voinovich said, noting that getting 60 votes in the Senate for a new plan would be daunting. "It's not a perfect plan, but it's a good plan."
While often voting with his party and his president, he's hardly in lock-step. That was no more evident than in 2003, when Voinovich stood his ground and refused to go higher than $350 billion in tax cuts.
Party leaders brought what he says was "unbelievable" pressure on him. President Bush even came to Ohio to backhand him in a public speech. But in the end Voinovich got his way.
"They say we have a $440 billion deficit, when the fact of the matter is, you add about $170 billion for Social Security, we're well over $500 billion," he said.
"When I held the line on ($350 billion) last year, I said we're in trouble and ... let's make it a front-end, drive-it-home stimulus package and not just let $550 (billion) or whatever number they wanted."
While he broke with Bush on tax cuts, Voinovich stands firmly with him on the Iraq war and the efforts to spread democracy throughout the Middle East.
"It's a battle for the hearts and minds of individuals," he said. "We've got to convince millions of young Muslims that they should not be chanting 'jihad.' They should be chanting 'freedom.'"
Voinovich outspends Fingerhut 10-to-one
Republican Sen. George Voinovich has spent 10 times as much money campaigning as Democratic challenger Eric Fingerhut in the last three months, according to reports released Friday.
Voinovich's $2.9 million in spending dwarfed Fingerhut's $305,000, according to campaign finance reports from the Federal Election Commission. Voinovich, a former Ohio governor, also outraised Fingerhut, a state senator, about four-to-one during the last reporting period. Voinovich took in $903,000, Fingerhut $245,000.
How Sen. George Voinovich, R-Ohio, is rated by special interest groups. The higher the number, the more often the group agreed with his votes.
