| Rep. Sykes fought hard to stop the Big, Ugly Law from cutting Medicaid and raising health care costs, ripping away food from Ohio families, jeopardizing jobs in Northeast Ohio hospital systems, and raising electricity bills – all so Republicans could give tax cuts to the rich to, in Rep. Sykes’ words, “help a billionaire get another yacht.”
However, Vance lied by claiming Sykes wouldn’t try to work with Republicans to make the bill better to actually lower costs for her community in OH-13.
Read more about how Rep. Sykes set the record straight:
Cleveland.com: Why this Ohio congresswoman says VP Vance lied about her absence at his steel mill event
- During a visit to a Canton steel mill on Monday to tout the “Big, Beautiful, Bill,” tax bill that Republicans jammed through Congress, Vice President JD Vance spent several minutes bashing the Democratic U.S. Representative in whose district the mill is located: Akron’s Emilia Sykes.
- In an interview after Vance’s appearance, Sykes says she wasn’t at Metallus along with her GOP counterparts because she wasn’t invited.
- She expects she wasn’t invited “because I would have not been able to sit there while he lied to steel workers and lied to my constituents about what this bill does.”
- Sykes said healthcare providers are the biggest employers in her district, and she expects they’ll be devastated by its effects because of the cuts to Medicaid.
- “When you have a trillion dollars being removed out of the Medicaid system, which pays for health care, that means that not only health care access is going to be impacted, but also our largest employers, they are going to either have to change their service lines or lay people off,” said Sykes.
- “And then these same laid off people who are going to attempt to access food assistance while they’re looking for a new job won’t be able to get it, because they’ve changed the rules around SNAP and food assistance, and there’s less money at our food bank. The ripple effects are really impactful.”
- She said around 6,000 people in Stark County were told they’ll have to find new health care because their Affordable Care Act subsidies are ending.
- “All of it is just to pay for tax cuts for the richest people in this country,” said Sykes. “We are going to shoulder the burden and shift all of those additional costs to working men and working women to help a billionaire get another yacht. That’s why I couldn’t support this bill.”
- In addition to disputing Vance’s claims about how the bill will affect her constituents, Sykes says he lied when he claimed she could have gone to the White House to discuss her concerns about the legislation with Trump administration officials.
- “The President invited a lot of Republican members to the White House to discuss the bill, but I did not get an invitation to do that,” she said, observing that if Republicans had wanted input from Democrats on the bill, they wouldn’t have rejected Democrats’ amendments, and used a process called “reconciliation” to pass it, that facilitates party line votes.
- “One thing I learned in law school – once they start attacking you, it means they’ve lost the argument,” said Sykes. “The fact that he is attacking me means that he knows the Republicans know that this bill is no good.”
- Sykes says it’s no coincidence that Vance showed up in her district.
- “I’m in one of the most competitive districts in the entire country, and I’m in a seat that the Republicans have been very angry that they have not been able to win, even though they drew it for a Republican to be in,” Sykes said.
- Although the state is currently represented by 5 Democrats and 10 Republicans in Congress, she said Republicans who controlled the last redistricting process drew maps that were meant to have victories by 13 Republicans and just 2 Democrats.
- When Republicans redraw congressional district lines again later this year, she said she expects them to try to rig the map even more. The fact that they have to do that shows “how badly they’ve been performing, to have a rigged map and you still lose the most competitive districts.”
- “In Akron, we are champions, we are winners, we work hard for our wins,” said Sykes. “Champions win because we’re good at what we do, we put in the hard work and we follow the rules. We don’t cheat or change the rules, and things don’t turn out in our favor.”
- Although she doesn’t know the boundaries of her congressional district will look like next year, she said she intends to seek re-election and is doing “the best I can with serving my constituents and being prepared for what comes my way.”
- “I won’t be bullied,” Sykes continued. “I work very hard for my constituents and will stand up for them at every single turn, including in not supporting this bill that transfers the most wealth away from middle- and low-income families to the richest people in this country and would decimate our health care system as well as the local economy.”
WKYC: Vice President JD Vance takes aim at Rep. Emilia Sykes for not supporting President Trump’s ‘big beautiful bill’
- “I could not support a bill that’s going to lead to joblessness and unemployment in my community. I can’t support a bill that is going to increase energy rates up to $400 a year. I can’t support a bill that’s going to add $3.4 trillion to the United States deficit,” [Emilia Sykes] said.
- Sykes also defended her efforts to improve the bill and condemned what she described as misleading statements from the vice president.
- “I’m angry actually that he would come to this district and lie and mislead constituents and make it seem as though, one, I didn’t do my due diligence,” she told 3News. “I shared and offered help not once, not twice, but three times in committee offering amendments that were voted down by party lines.”
- “My job is to work for the people of Ohio’s 13th congressional district. That’s what I have been doing today and that’s what I will continue to do,” Sykes added.
Akron Beacon Journal: Vice President JD Vance blasts Ohio Democrats in visit to tout Big Beautiful Bill
- A spokesperson for the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, the House Democrats’ campaign arm, called Vance’s visit a “desperate attempt to lie to Ohioans about the devastating impact the big, ugly law will have on working families.”
- Sykes said she’s consistently worked across the aisle, and that Vance’s charge that she was uninterested in working with Republicans is a lie, pointing to the numerous bipartisan bills she has introduced. She said she spoke with Vance when he was still a senator, on his way to becoming vice president, about working with the administration for the benefit of the district.
- “I just wish (Vance) had come to our district and told the truth,” Sykes said, “and I find it highly disrespectful that he would come lie to my constituents.”
- The White House didn’t want Democratic input into Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill, said Sykes, which is why they used the reconciliation process to push it through. Speaker of the House Mike Johnson said in a meeting with Democrats that reconciliation is a partisan process, Sykes said.
- “The reason why they do it is to avoid the filibuster in the Senate,” said Sykes, “They’re not looking for Democratic votes, so the suggestion from the vice president that I somehow did not make an attempt is not true. The entire reason people use the reconciliation process is so they don’t have to work with the minority party. If they thought they could get votes from the Democrats, they would not have done it.”
NBC News: Vance’s tour to tout Trump’s megabill offers a preview of his midterm mission
- Sykes, in a telephone interview afterward with NBC News, took issue with Vance’s characterization of the bill and of her involvement in fighting it. She also questioned whether the no-tax-on-overtime clause would apply to many of the workers Vance visited with Monday.
- “I certainly wished he would have used this opportunity and the office of the vice president to tell the truth,” Sykes said. “Instead, he chose the opportunity to lie to my friends and neighbors.”
- Sykes added that she was not invited to the event.
- Sykes, first elected to the House in 2022, won a second term last year by 2.2 percentage points, narrowly beating Republican Kevin Coughlin, a former state lawmaker.
- A majority of registered voters in two recent polls — 58% surveyed by Fox News, 52% surveyed by The Wall Street Journal — said they opposed the megabill.
- In an emailed statement, DCCC spokesperson Katie Smith called Vance’s visit “another desperate attempt to lie about the devastating impact the Big, Ugly Law will have on working families,” while predicting that voters in the district will rally behind Sykes.
|
