Sessions to speak at McKinley event

Rep. Pete Sessions, R-Texas, will be the special guest at a fundraiser for McKinley on Sept. 2, the Oliverio campaign said. The event at the Greenbrier is $250 a person.

In 2007, Session held a campaign reception for himself at the Forty Deuce burlesque club in Las Vegas and the Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington has listed Sessions as among the most corrupt in Congress, the campaign said.

Sessions is chairman of the National Republican Congressional Committee.

“On Sept. 2, David McKinley will be dining a man who is called one of the most corrupt members of Congress, a person who treats women as objects to raise money,” Oliverio campaign manager Curtis Wilkerson said. “I would have assumed that David McKinley could dip into the $6 million he has made from government contracts to further finance his race, rather than use someone with a low reputation to headline an event.”

Old news, according to McKinley campaign spokesman, Steve Cohen.

“Does Mike Oliverio have nothing more in his campaign arsenal than a rehash of this ancient news,” Cohen said “No wonder he is trying to distract from his love fest with Nancy Pelosi’s inner circle of Tax Hike (Steny) Hoyer and coal-killing Chris Van Hollen.”

Oliverio is a state senator and insurance agent from Morgantown. McKinley is a former legislator and chairman of the West Virginia Republican Party.

Besides a fondness for burlesque, Sessions supports tax breaks for companies outsourcing jobs overseas and privatizing Social Security, according to the Oliverio camp.

Calling it a firewall around the Social Security Trust Fund, McKinley issued a release Tuesday saying he told a group at the Preston County Senior Center that the government has to be prohibited from raiding the trust fund to protect benefits. Despite the system will pay out more than it receives beginning in 2016, the solution is not cutting benefits, raising payroll deductions or raising the eligibility age, he said.

“Ultimately, getting the trust fund on solid ground will come from economic recovery with expanding payrolls that put people back to work and generate contributions to the system,” said McKinley. “I told labor leaders just up the road in Morgantown last week that Washington must redirect federal stimulus dollars to spur hiring in the building trades, retrofitting public structures for energy efficiency, a program that will reverse the 35 percent jobless rate in the construction industry, promote energy independence and revive manufacturing to supply materials to contractors.”

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