Londrigan, Davis clash over health care
Congressman claims bipartisanship while acting as co-chairman of state Trump campaign
Democratic challenger Betsy Dirksen Londrigan and Republican Congressman Rodney Davis clashed repeatedly over health care in a televised debate Monday night. (WCIA-TV)
By Ted Cox
U.S. Rep. Rodney Davis and challenger Betsy Dirksen Londrigan clashed repeatedly over health care Monday in a debate ahead of the Nov. 3 general election.
Londrigan sharpened her attack over a battleground familiar from two years ago, when Davis narrowly won reelection, as she cited Davis’s 11 separate votes to repeal the Affordable Care Act without a replacement.
“People are making horrible choices in their own lives to pay for their own drugs,” Londrigan said, pointing to how many go without medication or cut the doses to make prescriptions last longer. She advocated putting Medicaid in charge of setting prescription prices. “This is a real-life issue that needs real-life solutions,” she said, “My No. 1 priority” is to “protect the Affordable Care Act.”
Davis tried to dismiss his opposition to Obamacare as “procedural votes” with no real consequence, but his claims of bipartisanship came under attack as Londrigan cited his 91 percent voting record backing President Trump in Congress, as well as his position as co-chairman of the Trump reelection campaign in Illinois. He defended his only recent shift against the Trump’s administration’s attempt to quash Obamacare in the courts, saying, “The Affordable Care Act, we need to fix it.”
“Congressman Davis is going to keep trying to distract you so you don’t look at his disastrous record on health care,” Londrigan said, charging that he voted three times in support of that lawsuit. She added that his own votes to quash the ACA also would have shut down rural hospitals in central Illinois — a charge he tried to turn on her.
“We’ve had years of Congressman Davis voting to repeal the Affordable Care Act,” Londrigan said, “and our votes are not safe with him." She later added, “He has bragged about it. He has celebrated it.”
Londrigan advocated a centralized, national approach to confront the COVID-19 pandemic. “With no national plan in place, states were pitted against one another,” she said. “We have to do better and we can do better and we should have done better.”
Betsy Dirksen Londrigan and U.S. Rep. Rodney Davis square off in their televised debate Monday. (WCIA-TV)
Londrigan advocated additional coronavirus relief, saying, “People need their unemployment insurance extended,” as well as additional funding for the Paycheck Protection Program.
Davis backed his role in advocating PPP in the original CARES Act relief package that passed, saying, “It helped so many mom-and-pop shops,” but he blamed House Speaker Nancy Pelosi for the failure to pass additional relief — even though the U.S. House passed the HEROES Act in May, only to see it ignored by Senate Republicans.
Davis, of Taylorville, claimed to be one of the most bipartisan members of Congress and the most bipartisan in the Illinois congressional delegation. But Londrigan again cited his 91 percent voting record siding with Trump in Congress, as well as his role as co-chairman of Trump’s reelection campaign in Illinois, adding, “So let’s keep the facts clear on your supposed bipartisanship.”
Questioned about the recent New York Times report finding that Trump paid no income taxes over much of the last decade, and $750 apiece in federal taxes in 2016 and 2017, Davis said, “I want to see more transparency” on behalf of the newspaper report and repeated that Trump had said the report was “not true.”
“It is ridiculous that a millionaire or billionaire is paying $750 a year in taxes,” Londrigan said. “The system is broken.” She called out the congressman’s support for what she called the “tax scam of 2017, which Rep. Davis was the face of,” granting $1 trillion in tax breaks, for the most part to the rich and wealthy.
They swapped charges on being funded by political action committees. “Her mortgage is literally paid for by corporate lobbying with Big Pharma clients,” Davis said. He charged that Londigran was being funded by Illinois House Speaker Michael Madigan, under investigation in the ongoing federal ComEd bribery scheme.
Londrigan, of Springfield, countered that Davis had accepted contributions from Big Pharma as well as Exelon, ComEd’s corporate parent. “So when we’re talking about what’s happening here in Illinois and the dirty politics,” she said, “Congressman Davis is right in the middle of it.”
“ComEd is not Exelon,” Davis replied.
“Exelon owns ComEd, Congressman,” Londrigan said. “But you know that.”
Davis acknowledged, “I’m pro-life,” defending abortion only in the case of rape, incest, or the risk of life to the mother.
“I trust women,” Londrigan countered. “I trust women to make their own decisions about their own bodies without the government interfering.”
Davis said he’d defended farmers through the most recent Farm Bill, but Londrigan countered that he had advocated versions of the bill that also cut funding for food stamps in the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
Davis attacked Londrigran’s support for the Fair Tax Amendment in Illinois, but repeated the lie that “it will raise middle-class taxes,” which is not the case, and also suggested it would drive taxpayers to flee the state — also debunked.
Londrigan pointed to the Future Energy Jobs Act as an Illinois success story. “Illinois should be a role model,” she said. “That’s what we need to be doing.”
The debate, broadcast across central Illinois, took place in Champaign in the studios of WCIA-TV. The 13th Congressional District the two candidates are fighting to represent stretches from the Mississippi River just north of St. Louis through Springfield and Decatur to the college twin-cities pairings of Bloomington-Normal and Champaign-Urbana.