Democratic Congressman and U.S. Senate candidate Tim Ryan attended a small business roundtable in Lima on Tuesday to talk about economic concerns. Ryan was joined by local business owners and Lima Mayor Sharetta Smith (left).
Mackenzi Klemann/The Lima News
LIMA — U.S. Senate candidate Tim Ryan on Tuesday touted a $280 billion bill recently passed by Congress that would boost domestic production of computer chips and semiconductors, now awaiting President Joe Biden’s signature.
Ryan, who is campaigning against Republican author J.D. Vance for the Senate seat currently held by Sen. Rob Portman, promoted the CHIPS and Science Act during a campaign stop in Lima on Tuesday. He described the bill as the first part of a “real plan” to restore job growth after years of companies outsourcing their manufacturing production overseas.
“We lost chip manufacturing for a long time,” Ryan said during a small business roundtable. “We lost middle-class jobs. We lost manufacturing jobs. They went to China. They went to Mexico …
“And I’m here to say we have a real plan, a real agenda on how we move forward, and that starts with dominating the industries of the future like the CHIPS Act—semiconductors and chip production.”
The bill, which includes $52 billion in assistance for the semiconductor industry, comes after Intel announced plans to build a semiconductor plant near Columbus.
Small businesses struggling to keep pace with inflation “can’t weather the storm like Amazon can,” Ryan told reporters on Tuesday. “They need a tax cut and corporations need a tax cut as well until we get out of this mess.”
For workers, Ryan said an income tax cut similar to the expanded child tax credit that expired in January could “put money in people’s pockets.”
Ryan has styled himself as a moderate throughout the campaign, a theme he continued Tuesday as he described “Democrats, Republicans and independent-minded people” being pitted against an extremist political movement “more concerned about getting power and then using that power to control people.”
