U.S. Rep. Spartz talks health care, House rules and Ukraine at Kokomo town hall

Feb. 5—A day after announcing she will not run for any office in 2024, U.S. Rep. Victoria Spartz was in Kokomo for a town hall event where locals asked her questions on a variety of topics, such as the Susan Muffley Act, health care, the House's new rules, the Russia-Ukraine war and more.

Saturday's hourlong event, held in the Cardinal and Peony rooms of the Kokomo-Howard County Public Library south branch, was standing room only as more than 80 people attended.

Spartz fielded roughly a dozen questions during the hour and stayed for a couple dozen more minutes after the event to talk to attendees and answer additional questions.

Here are the highlights:

ON HER NOT SEEKING A NEW TERM

Considered a possible candidate for the state's open U.S. Senate seat, Spartz announced Friday she would not only not seek the U.S. Senate seat, she also would not run for a third term as representative of Indiana's Fifth Congressional District.

Spartz, who was first elected to represent the Fifth District in 2020, said the decision not to run again was a difficult one to make.

"I've prioritized politics for such a long time, and I have two girls, two very independent ladies in high school, and I just want to spend a little more time with them," Spartz said. "It's an important time for them ... and sometimes it's good to pull back from politics."

Spartz's decision further solidifies the chances of U.S. Rep. Jim Banks for the Senate seat from the Republican-dominated state, after former Gov. Mitch Daniels also declined to become a candidate.

The Senate scramble started with current GOP Sen. Mike Braun's move to make a 2024 run for governor. Banks has consolidated support from former President Donald Trump and the Senate Republican national campaign organization. Banks has become a combative defender of Trump since first being elected to Congress from a heavily Republican district in northeastern Indiana in 2016.

SUSAN MUFFLEY ACT

Spartz was a supporter and a co-sponsor last year of the Susan Muffley Act, which would restore salaried Delphi retirees' pensions for nearly 20,000 across the country, including more than 4,000 in Indiana and Howard County, as well as give them a lump-sum payment with 6% interest to cover the amount of money they lost since 2009 from their reduced payouts.

The bill was reintroduced by Reps. Mike Turner, R-Ohio, Dan Kildee, D-Michigan, Claudia Tenney, R-New York, and Gwen Moore, D-Wisconsin, last week. Several in attendance asked Spartz whether or not she would support the bill this year if it comes to the U.S. House of Representatives floor for a vote.

Spartz's initial answer highlighted the fact she co-sponsored the bill in 2022 and that she feels it's important for people to receive the benefits they were promised. After the event, Spartz told the Tribune she was "supportive of the issue."

NEW HOUSE RULES

In early January, 20 House Republicans for days denied U.S. Rep. Kevin McCarthy an easy path to becoming Speaker of the House. McCarthy was eventually elected to the position, though not without having to make concessions in the form of changes to the House rules.

Some of those House rules changes include, according to Politico:

* Restoring the ability of a single House lawmaker to make a motion to vacate the chair, essentially to call for a no-confidence vote in the speaker.

* McCarthy agreed to give three seats on the House Rules committee to the House Freedom Caucus, which gives those three members de facto veto power over any bill that comes to the floor.

* A new rule requires bills be released at least 72 hours before a floor vote, though Politico reports that the rules package "includes no new language to enforce that mandate."

* The Democrats' PAYGO rule has been killed and replaced with CUTGO, which "requires mandatory spending increases to be offset only with equal or greater decreases in mandatory spending — no new taxes allowed," according to Politico. Notably, that doesn't mean deficit-increasing tax cuts are off the table as CUTGO only requires offsets if bills would increase mandatory spending.

* Republicans also eliminated the so-called Gephardt rule, which allowed the House to "automatically send a measure extending the debt limit to the Senate when it adopts a budget resolution. That maneuver had been used to let the House avoid a direct vote on lifting the debt ceiling."

On the fourth vote of McCarthy's bid for Speaker, Spartz voted "Present" and said that while she supported him, she also said "But ultimately, he needs to be able to address the concerns of other people," according to the Wall Street Journal.

Spartz said Saturday that she supports many of the new House rules as she believes the House should not be run like a "dictatorship."

"We are not a dictatorship," Spartz said. "We do not have kings and queens. Speaker (Nancy) Pelosi was one, but Speaker McCarthy will not be one. It was a little bit of a fight, but I told Kevin that conservatives are not sheep, they are not going to fold. ... So we actually made some significant changes to our rules that were really common sense changes."

RUSSIA-UKRAINE WAR

Being the first Ukrainian-born member of Congress, it's not surprising Spartz has had a lot to say about the ongoing war between Russia and Ukraine.

While she has wholly supported the U.S. support for Ukraine since Russia's invasion last February, calling the invasion "a genocide of the Ukrainian people by a crazy man," she also has criticized Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy, accusing him of "playing politics and theater" and has also asserted that "Congress cannot send 'blank checks' to support Ukrainian forces fighting Russian invaders" and that there needs to be better monitoring of U.S. supplied weapons because she fears the weapons may find their way to Syria and Russia.

Spartz's criticisms over Ukraine and Zelenskyy have faced backlash, but she stuck to them Saturday, describing the country's track record of the weapons it has supplied to groups in Afghanistan and Iraq as less than ideal and calling Zelenskyy as a man who thinks he's "close to God"

"That's no politician in my mind (who is close to God)," Spartz said. "Politicians are probably on the low end of the spectrum for me in what I think about them."

HEALTH CARE

Last year, Spartz introduced several bills aimed at reducing health care costs by improving competition, and in December she joined with House Democrat Pramila Jayapal in introducing the Stop Anticompetitive Healthcare Act, which would change the Federal Trade Commission Act to expand antitrust enforcement to nonprofit hospitals.

The U.S. spends on average nearly double on health than other industrialized countries, yet the U.S. continues to rank lower in life expectancy, infant mortality, heart disease and other major health outcomes compared to those same peer countries.

Spartz said Saturday she will continue to fight for more competition in health care and will advocate for less "government takeover" and against the U.S. moving toward a "socialist" single-payer system.

"Republicans need to have a backbone to challenge the status quo and not be afraid to take on special interests," Spartz said. "We are subsidizing billions of dollars to large monopolies ... and we need to stop it. This is pure fraud, and health care is a big part of it. People don't have proper access. We're almost to socialist health care now, and we give billions of dollars to large companies that make a lot of money that build Taj Mahals, and we have no improvement to value in health care."

Tyler Juranovich can be reached at 765-454-8577, by email at tyler.juranovich@kokomotribune.com or on Twitter at @tylerjuranovich.