{"id":180650,"date":"2024-06-21T21:12:10","date_gmt":"2024-06-22T02:12:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/thevwindependent.com\/news\/?p=180650"},"modified":"2024-06-21T21:12:11","modified_gmt":"2024-06-22T02:12:11","slug":"latta-inflation-drugs-border-concerns","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thevwindependent.com\/news\/2024\/06\/21\/latta-inflation-drugs-border-concerns\/","title":{"rendered":"Latta: inflation, drugs, border concerns"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

SCOTT TRUXELL\/<\/strong>independent editor<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The economy and inflation are two of the biggest concerns heard by U.S. Congressman Bob Latta (R-5th<\/sup> District) during his travels around his massive district. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Latta visited Van Wert and Paulding counties on Friday and among other things, he met with constituents during courthouse conferences, or one-on-one meetings to discuss federal casework problems, including social security, Medicare and veterans issues. He also met with the VW independent<\/em> and shared what he\u2019s been hearing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"
Bob Latta<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

\u201cPeople are saying they don\u2019t have as much money in their pocket compared to two or three years ago,\u201d Latta said of inflation. \u201cPeople got increases in their salary (during and after COVID-19) but during the last couple of years they saw 9.1 percent inflation, and that all disappeared. Gasoline prices are $1 higher than when President Biden came into office and that hurts people.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cInterest rates \u2013 if you want to buy a house or buy a car \u2013 rates are higher because federal government spending is out of control in the first few years of this administration,\u201d he continued. \u201cI didn\u2019t vote for any of it but everybody pays the consequences.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2018Next year, we\u2019ll spend $1 trillion to pay interest on the national debt because of all the spending that\u2019s happened early on in the Biden administration but here\u2019s the thing \u2013 we don\u2019t have $1 trillion, so we\u2019re going to have to borrow that money to pay the interest, so that means we\u2019re going to have to pay about 4.5 percent and that means borrowing costs for Americans are going to rise with it.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI always tell people \u2013 we don\u2019t have a revenue issue, we have lots of tax money coming in \u2013 it\u2019s the spending part of it we\u2019re in trouble on,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Latta mentioned the border and drugs, specifically Fentanyl, as other concerns of district residents.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n

\u201cWe had 74,000 people die of Fentanyl poisoning last year and it\u2019s all this stuff that comes from communist China and Mexico and flows into this country when you have an open border,\u201d Latta said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Switching gears, Latta also spoke about the government\u2019s push for electric vehicles and sluggish sales due to a lack of interest by potential customers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThe problem is the federal government should not try to dictate what the American people drive,\u201d he said. \u201cWhat they did was say \u2018we\u2019re put these mandates out there on combustible engines and we\u2019re going to try to get ride of them (the cars) and everybody is going to be driving an electric car by 2035.\u2019 There\u2019s a couple of problems they didn\u2019t think about \u2013 they didn\u2019t think about the American consumer, we don\u2019t have charging stations, and we don\u2019t have the electric grid set up to do this.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Latta has served eight full two-year terms in Congress, and won a special election and a one-year term in 2007. He\u2019s seeking re-election this year and is been opposed by Democrat Keith Mundy. Latta represents Ohio\u2019s fifth district, which runs from the Indiana border to just west of Cleveland. It includes all or parts of 12 counties.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

SCOTT TRUXELL\/independent editor The economy and inflation are two of the biggest concerns heard by U.S. Congressman Bob Latta (R-5th District) during his travels around his massive district.  Latta visited Van Wert and Paulding counties on Friday and among other things, he met with constituents during courthouse conferences, or one-on-one meetings to discuss federal casework […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-180650","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-05-30 22:57:00","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thevwindependent.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/180650","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thevwindependent.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thevwindependent.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thevwindependent.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thevwindependent.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=180650"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/thevwindependent.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/180650\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":180670,"href":"https:\/\/thevwindependent.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/180650\/revisions\/180670"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thevwindependent.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=180650"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thevwindependent.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=180650"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thevwindependent.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=180650"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}