Biographical Information
name
Robert E Lee
campaign phone number
864-341-4563
1. What are your top three priorities for legislative action for the next two years?
1. I will represent South Carolina’s 4th District with a firm vote against endless wars. These conflicts steal American taxpayers’ future earnings and rob foreign civilians of their lives. Congress has sent billions into these fights that do not make us safer. Trump promised to stop the dying—Congress must finally deliver.
2. I will introduce and support legislation that creates real checks and balances on government, demanding full transparency and expecting justice. The Epstein scandal is far larger and more sinister than Watergate. I would have signed Rep. Thomas Massie’s discharge petition to force the vote on the Epstein Files Transparency Act while my opponent William Timmons sat it out.
3. I will review government’s relationship with lobbies and special interest groups. The democratic process fails everyday Americans in the Upstate when we are out-bought 2:1 by big donors. Do the strings attached to large corporations and foreign lobbies help your representative serve you?
2. Should the Federal government continue to reduce funding for social assistance programs like Medicaid and SNAP?
I will not seek to reduce benefits for these programs, even though I am ideologically opposed to socialism in all its forms. Instead, I will aggressively attack the vertically integrated monopolies built by corporate lobbyists that extract maximum profits from American patients and taxpayers. Pharmaceutical and hospital giants spent over $500 million lobbying Congress in recent cycles alone, locking in high drug prices, eliminating competition, and driving up costs that force families onto these programs in the first place. My focus is real reform: break the monopoly power, enforce price transparency, and redirect savings from endless wars and crony contracts back to American families.
3. How can Congress respond to threats to public health such as falling vaccination rates and declining research funding?
Congress should respond with radical transparency and real competition, not more mandates or taxpayer bailouts. If vaccines work, they should sell themselves on the open market like any other product. If parents have legitimate concerns about safety and effectiveness, the pharmaceutical industry must provide full transparency. The gold standard for any pharmaceutical remains the double-blind, placebo-controlled test using true placebos—not another vaccine. Promoting the honest results of those rigorous studies will go a long way toward restoring public confidence in the vaccine industry.
4. What do you see as Congress's role in responding to our military initiatives across the globe?
Congress’s constitutional role is clear: declare war, control the purse strings, and provide real oversight—not rubber-stamp endless adventures pushed by war hawks bought and paid for by the military-industrial complex. Too often our military adventurism is spurred by special interests that spent over $190 million lobbying Congress last year alone, while American taxpayers foot the bill and our children pay with their future.
We don’t have a great record at “nation building.” Iraq became the seedbed of ISIS. We spent 20 years and trillions in Afghanistan, only for the Taliban to take over in a single day. After Gaddafi, Libya descended into rival militias, civil war, open slave markets, and an ISIS affiliate. Enough.
5. Are there any elements of the AI industry that concern you and that you believe need government oversight?
Yes—government oversight by the people, not corporate lobbyists, will be crucial as this transformative technology develops. Big Tech and AI firms spent hundreds of millions lobbying Congress last year alone, trying to shape the rules in their favor while building vertically integrated monopolies.
There will be cases where algorithms need forced transparency so their manipulative effects can be curtailed. Oversight is needed to ensure foreign actors—or our own government—cannot manipulate or censor the powerful tools of information, knowledge, creation, and research.
As your representative, I will demand real algorithmic accountability without handing more power to the swamp. True America First means keeping AI as a force for freedom.