Brown, Moreno on how they will save Ohioans money

COLUMBUS, Ohio (WCMH) — Candidates in the most expensive U.S. Senate race in the country are spreading their final messages to voters in Ohio.

Incumbent Senator Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio) is running for his fourth term as senator and is being challenged by Republican businessman Bernie Moreno. The pivotal race will likely determine whether Republicans or Democrats hold control of the U.S. Senate.

On Monday, Moreno kicked off his statewide bus tour for the last leg of the campaign, so we asked Moreno about an issue top of mind for Ohioans: the economy.

“Businesspeople know how to grow economies,” Moreno said. “That’s what we do.”

Moreno rattled off a plan that he thinks will help everyday Ohioans live a more affordable life and it starts with driving down the cost of energy.

“Energy is literally the ingredient, the basic ingredient in everything we buy,” he said. “You lower the cost of energy by unleashing American energy. We become an energy superpower. The energy superpower of the world is coal. Yes, coal.”

Aside from coal, Moreno said he also wants to tap into both Ohio’s and the country’s natural gas resources and lift up oil refineries. He also mentioned taking a look at nuclear energy. Moreno said one place where he does not think the U.S. should invest is wind and solar energy.

“If you have like a little garage that you want to heat, you know, seven windmills is probably appropriate for that,” he said. “We’re not going to subsidize those … because the technology is not there yet.”

Moreno said he is not anti-solar or anti-windmill but said the government should stay out of supporting related projects.

“These companies don’t have a business model that’s actually sustainable, so let’s have the same lens on all energy sources. Is it abundant? Is it reliable? Is it affordable? If you meet those three criteria, great,” he said.

Moreno said he also wants to “get rid of all these EV [electric vehicle] mandates, all these EV [tax] incentives,” and said the government needs to stop “telling the marketplace what to do.”

Moreno said driving costs down for everyday Ohioans means more than energy; it also means having a “regulatory environment to help businesses grow.”

He said right now that the regulations are choking both large and small businesses. He also is in favor of changing some of the country’s tax codes to “reward success.”

“For example, companies get a lower tax rate if they employ Americans here in America and if they’re shipping jobs overseas and building factories overseas, they pay a higher tax rate,” he said. “That encourages manufacturing to happen here.”

Moreno also said the U.S. should bring back requirements on social safety net programs and “massively cut” government spending.

“D.C. is addicted to spending; that’s what’s driving the cost up,” Moreno said. “The government is taking way too much of our economy.”

In a statement, a spokesperson with Brown’s campaign said, “While Sherrod stands up to corporations and special interests to lower costs and make sure hard work pays off for all Ohioans, Bernie Moreno has faced lawsuit after lawsuit for refusing to pay his employees what they had earned and went so far as to destroy the evidence to try to get away with it. Ohioans know that while Sherrod fights for them, Bernie Moreno only looks out for himself.”

The campaign pointed to work Brown has already done during his tenure as senator. Like, his legislation , introduced in February of this year, to “hold corporations accountable for shrinking their products without lowering their costs,” it is a phenomenon known as “shrinkflation.”

Brown’s campaign also talked about his role in the passage of the Inflation Reduction Act in 2022 and highlighted provisions that lowered healthcare costs by capping prices for certain drugs and allowing Medicare to negotiate drug costs. Now, the campaign said Brown is “fighting to cap the cost of insulin for all Ohioans.”

The campaign also pointed out other efforts like “standing up” to the Biden Administration to suspend a federal regulation in order to lower gas prices and his “effort to cut taxes for Ohio workers and families” through Child Tax Credits and Earned Income Tax Credits.

For more on Brown’s latest central Ohio campaign stop, which centered around abortion and women’s reproductive rights, click here.

Even though the candidates have campaigned across the state, they never met on a debate stage and will not before the Nov. 8 election.

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