Ohioans flood lawmakers with debt-debate concerns

Associated Press

COLUMBUS

Ohioans were calling, writing and tweeting at their lawmakers in droves for a second day Wednesday over their concerns about the debt showdown in Washington and the potential for a government default.

Some Ohio residents fearful of the possible effects of a default urged lawmakers to resolve the situation quickly and compromise, while others encouraged them to stand firm along party lines.

Christine Haas, a Democrat from Marion, said by Wednesday she had signed a letter of support for President Barack Obama, tweeted her disappointment to Republican Sen. Rob Portman and emailed two key GOP figures from Ohio — House Speaker John Boehner and her congressman, Rep. Jim Jordan, who opposed Boehner’s debt bill Tuesday. Boehner was retooling his plan Wednesday to increase the U.S. borrowing limit and cut $1 trillion in federal spending.

“I have hopes that they will reach a deal that’s more toward the White House and the Senate’s liking,” said Haas, 57, a self-described political junkie who runs a nonprofit agency that works with low-income women. “I don’t think it will be the ideal, which is just raise the debt ceiling through 2012 with no cuts and no revenues talked about. We can deal with those later.”

Her home-mortgage rate is fixed, and her two vehicles are mostly paid off, she said, so she’s more worried about how the situation will affect her three grown children, their families and her community than herself. She said lawmakers’ handling of the showdown has been a disappointment and that many of her friends, including Republicans, felt the same way.

The leader of one of the first tea-party groups in southwest Ohio, Boehner’s home area, said interest and feelings “are certainly ramping up as we get closer to the deadline.”

Cincinnati tea-party president Mike Wilson said Wednesday that Boehner’s earlier plan didn’t take strong-enough steps to solve the debt problem and that he wants to see real spending cuts and ways to make sure deficit reduction isn’t merely a temporary patch.

“I think there is a lot of frustration with the Boehner plan not being good enough,” Wilson said. “Our folks are scared that we’re going to get sold out by the Republican leadership. That is one of the reasons why you have a tea party: the perception that the leadership is willing to compromise too quickly.”

Ohio lawmakers were among those whose Capitol Hill telephone lines were jammed after Obama urged the public to contact their representatives in a Monday night speech. A spokesman for Rep. Tim Ryan of Niles, D-17th, said the number of debt-ceiling-related emails his office received had doubled since Obama’s address.

Many of the calls pouring into lawmakers’ offices in Washington and back home are from older folks worried that their Social Security checks won’t show up in the mail.

“They’re frightened and pleading with us to fix this,” said Steve Fought, a spokesman for Rep. Marcy Kaptur, a Democrat from Toledo. “We got more emails in one hour than we normally get in a week.”

The tone of those phone calls isn’t partisan, in contrast to the debate over the sweeping health-care overhaul.

“The response during the health-care debate had a nasty edge,” Fought said. “This is more pleading. They’re confused and frightened.”

Jim Lewandowski, a retired factory worker in Toledo, said he lives solely on his Social Security payments and has enough to last only a month or two. He walks daily to a senior center where he shoots pool with a group of retirees, and they’re all angry and annoyed by the chance that the government might cut off their Social Security checks, he said.

Lewandowski, 68, blames the freshmen in Congress.

“They just got elected, and they want to solve everything at once,” he said. “They can’t. They were voted in by the people. They forgot that. They’re not thinking about the people. They’re only thinking about themselves.”