Northeast Pennsylvania U.S. Rep. Rob Bresnahan talked tax relief during a brief speech Wednesday night as Republicans opened their unusual midterm convention in Texas.<\/p>\n
\u201cIn Northeastern Pennsylvania, we work until the job is done. And those extra hours should mean more money in your pocket. That\u2019s why we delivered tax relief on overtime through the Working Families Tax Cut Act,\u201d the 8th District congressman from Dallas Twp. told the crowd.<\/p>\n
The first-term GOP incumbent spoke for about four minutes, never mentioning even indirectly his November opponent, Democratic Scranton Mayor Paige Cognetti, and mentioning President Donald Trump\u2019s name only once.<\/p>\n
The first night of the two-day convention in Dallas mainly offered speech after speech bashing Democrats and celebrating Trump, putting their party\u2019s undisputed leader at the center of the upcoming midterm elections \u2014 whether the candidates running like it or not.<\/p>\n
Many Republicans, including those facing tight races, are skipping the two-day affair, while others hope their appearance will put them in the national spotlight as they work to turn out Trump\u2019s supporters in a year without him on the ballot.<\/p>\n
The convention \u2014 part rally and part fundraiser \u2014 comes as Republicans try to boost enthusiasm heading into the midterms\u2019 final stretch despite Trump\u2019s low approval ratings. Much of the programming attempts to cast Democrats as extremists by highlighting the party\u2019s insurgent left wing, while offering the GOP as a \u201ccommon sense\u201d alternative.<\/p>\n
Bresnahan, appearing on stage immediately after Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, a Senate candidate, remarked on NEPA\u2019s industrial history and tied it to workers\u2019 current spending power.<\/p>\n
\u201cEvery decision Washington makes can determine whether the next investment or the next job happens here in America or somewhere else,\u201d he said. \u201cThat\u2019s why tax relief matters. When manufacturers can keep more of what they earn, they can buy equipment, hire workers and train apprentices. And the people doing the work should keep more of what they earn too. In Northeastern Pennsylvania, we work until the job is done. And those extra hours should mean more money in your pocket.\u201d<\/p>\n
Bresnahan said he was eager to fight to preserve tax cuts and \u201cstop Democrats from repealing them,\u201d but he stressed that tax cuts were only part of the solution.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf we\u2019re going to make more things in America, we need the American workforce to do it. We need technical schools, apprenticeships and career paths that lead to good-paying jobs without a mountain of debt,\u201d he said. \u201cWe need the unions that have trained generations of some of the most skilled workers in American history. We have those workers in Northeastern Pennsylvania, and communities across this country are ready for the same opportunity, because our future depends on making what America needs right here at home, with American workers, not relying on other countries to do it for us.\u201d<\/p>\n
At the end of his remarks, Bresnahan introduced \u201cone of these workers, a mother from just across the border in Maryland\u201d: Nora Pruitt, a mother of seven who works at a welding factory in Baltimore, identified on screen as \u201ceveryday American.\u201d<\/p>\n
In an unusual twist, Democratic Sen. John Fetterman spoke to the convention via video, an extraordinary escalation of the growing rupture between the Pennsylvanian and his party.<\/p>\n
Fetterman\u2019s decision is certain to stoke fears, already simmering among Democrats, that he will switch parties. Democrats need to pick up four GOP-held Senate seats in November to regain the majority. If Fetterman were to join the Republican Party, Democrats would need to pick up another seat to have control of the chamber.<\/p>\n
Fetterman spoke for just over one minute in a recorded video introducing his fellow Pennsylvania senator, Republican Dave McCormick, whom Fetterman called \u201ca great American.\u201d<\/p>\n
Coinciding with the gathering, Trump\u2019s political operation, which has been sitting on hundreds of millions of dollars, began spending heavily through a new group, the No Going Back PAC Inc., The New York Times first reported Wednesday. The group has reserved $49 million in six competitive Senate races and one competitive House race.<\/p>\n
That\u2019s in addition to the $10 million that MAGA Inc., Trump\u2019s super PAC, has spent on the Texas Senate race.<\/p>\n
The lineup features Trump and more Trump<\/p>\n
Normal political conventions are held every four years and serve a purpose beyond pomp and circumstance, with parties formally nominating their presidential picks. This week\u2019s convention, by contrast, is The Trump Show, through and through.<\/p>\n
\u201cDo we love President Trump?\u201d Republican National Committee Chair Joe Gruters, one of the first speakers, asked the crowd. He had promoted the event before it began as \u201ca Trump-a-Palooza.\u201d<\/p>\n
The walls of the basketball arena, where the Dallas Mavericks play, were covered with photographs of Trump, even in the elevators. Plenty of attendees wore cowboy hats and boots, as well as \u201cMake America Great Again\u201d and American flag caps and other gear.<\/p>\n
\u201cLooks very big. Looks very exciting,\u201d Trump said of the gathering crowd before boarding Air Force One to fly to Dallas.<\/p>\n
But that wasn\u2019t the case during the first hour of afternoon programming, when speeches were delivered to scores of empty seats, even in areas close to the stage.<\/p>\n
The president also said that oil prices \u2014 which have surged because of the Iran war \u2014 likely won\u2019t come down until after the midterms, a bit of economic forecasting that could darken his party\u2019s fortunes.<\/p>\n
\u201cRight after the election, oil prices are going to be tumbling downward,\u201d he promised. That came as oil prices jumped more than 3% Wednesday.<\/p>\n
Trump speaks both nights, delivering a keynote address on Wednesday night and speaking again on Thursday, after Vice President JD Vance gives his own address.<\/p>\n
\u201cLook, he\u2019s an entertainer, right? He obviously loves big, big events and his career has been built around that,\u201d said Ray Washburne, co-chair of the Dallas host committee, at a pre-convention event hosted by Bloomberg News. \u201cHe\u2019s always front and center.\u201d<\/p>\n
Washburne said the event is expected to draw roughly 30,000 people across both nights.<\/p>\n
Agenda includes some key candidates<\/p>\n
Also addressing the convention are members of the Republican congressional leadership and Cabinet members, including Attorney General Todd Blanche and Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. The president\u2019s oldest son, Donald Trump Jr., is on the roster, too.<\/p>\n
Candidates who will speak include Michigan Senate nominee Mike Rogers, who is running a high-profile race against Democratic nominee Abdul El-Sayed, and North Carolina Senate nominee Michael Whatley, who is up against former Gov. Roy Cooper.<\/p>\n
Organizers have outlined 12 hours of programming over the two nights, featuring more than 100 speakers and segments focused on subjects such as tax cuts, fraud allegations, border security and a proposed ban on members of Congress trading stocks.<\/p>\n
Missing from the public agenda: any mention of the unpopular Iran war.<\/p>\n
Republican House Speaker Mike Johnson said some members of his caucus plan to skip Dallas, preferring to stay home and campaign for reelection, but many of them will make an appearance.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019ll parade our stars across the stage,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Washburne said there were strong reasons for some lawmakers and candidates to pass on attending.<\/p>\n
\u201cOne thing, we just have so many speaking slots. We can\u2019t get them all in. The other is: If you\u2019re not in a contested race, it really doesn\u2019t make much sense to come. And the ones in contested races, they need to be in their home states to campaign,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Some balked at high attendance fees. Republican House members were being asked to pay $25,000 for convention tickets and lodging, according to people familiar with the situation and granted anonymity to speak frankly about the private arrangement.<\/p>\n
An additional 2,000 tickets were distributed by the National Republican Congressional Committee, largely to donors and others to attend the convention. Other tickets were allocated to state parties to distribute as they saw fit.<\/p>\n
Democrats have held such midterm conventions in the past but are not doing so this year. Rep. Suzan DelBene of Washington, chair of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, said she wasn\u2019t worried that her party was missing an opportunity to make its case on a national stage like Republicans.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey are not focused on the issues that people are struggling with right now, that they\u2019ve created,\u201d DelBene said. \u201cCost, housing, food, healthcare, childcare, energy costs, gas prices all going up. That\u2019s what we\u2019re talking about on the ground all across the country.\u201d<\/p>\n
Associated Press writers Jill Colvin, Thomas Beaumont and Will Weissert contributed to this report.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Northeast Pennsylvania U.S. Rep. Rob Bresnahan talked tax relief during a brief speech Wednesday night as Republicans opened…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":283331,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15],"tags":[201,182,803,139,28,29,50,178,180,179,181],"class_list":["post-283330","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-scranton","tag-lackawanna-county","tag-local-news","tag-luzerne-county","tag-news","tag-pennsylvania","tag-pennsylvania-news","tag-politics","tag-scranton","tag-scranton-headlines","tag-scranton-news","tag-top-stories-stt"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/283330","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=283330"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/283330\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/283331"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=283330"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=283330"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=283330"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}