CLEVELAND, Ohio - Ohio candidates for U.S. Senate, J.D. Vance and Valley Congressman, Tim Ryan faced off in Cleveland Monday night for a debate. Here's where both candidates stood on all the issues.

The first topic discussed was rising inflation. Vance says while some government money is well spent, there is a lot of money that isn't well spent blaming "reckless Democratic spending" for the higher cost of goods such as groceries.

"When we're talking about $6 trillion, a lot of the money isn't well spent, and that's fundamentally the problem with what we've seen out of the Biden administration. Simultaneously, they've borrowed and spent trillions of dollars that we just don't have and that's thrown fuel on the fire on the inflation problem," Vance said.

"I think people deserve to go to the grocery store without it completely breaking the bank," Vance added.

In response to Vance's criticism that Ryan votes in favor of these spending bills 100% of the time, Ryan says folks should examine what the bills are.

"A bipartisan infrastructure bill that's going to create 600,000 jobs in Ohio ... Look at the CHIPS Act, lands the Intel project that's going to create a $100 billion investment into Ohio. That's gonna ripple throughout this entire economy ... Look at the Inflation Reduction Act ... we're going all in on natural gas. I've been a natural gas proponent since I've been in Congress," Ryan said.

The second topic discussed was China and whether or not it is the enemy.

Vance says China has "stolen a big chunk of [America's] industrial and manufacturing base" and says one of the reasons for this is because energy is expensive and because China "undercuts American wages."

"China is a big, big issue, but China's problems are exacerbated by our own leadership's failures. Those failures go back 20 years when Tim Ryan started in Congress. They certainly go back to the last couple years when Joe Biden took over," Vance said.

When asked if President Biden was to blame for rising inflation, Ryan says "everybody is to blame."

"We're coming out of a pandemic. It's a problem, but the question is are we going to sit around for another 10 years and point fingers? What I've been proposing is a significant tax cut for working people and small businesses. Put money in people's pockets," Ryan said.

The next topic discussed was abortion and the recent overturning of Roe v. Wade. Ryan says he supports going back to Roe v. Wade citing issues such as young girls not being able to get an abortion after rape and women who had significant problems with their pregnancy not being able to get an abortion.

Ryan went on to criticize Vance for alleged comments calling rape an "inconvenience."

"Rape is not inconvenient. It's a significant tragedy, and [Vance] thinks that we should have Ohio state law, which says that if you're raped or pregnant through incent that you should be forced to have the baby. This is the biggest government overreach of our lifetime," Ryan said.

Vance denied ever calling rape an inconvenience and says the best way to stop abortions is to allow better access to health care so abortion no longer feels like the only option in situations such as rape.

"I saw a lot of young women have abortions when I was growing up, and one of the things that always struck me is it felt like a lot of those young women didn't have options. They felt like they didn't have the health care that they needed. We've got to fix that," Vance said.

When asked about a law proposed by Senator, Lindsey Graham to ban abortion nationally after the 15th week of pregnancy, Vance said while states should still have the right to decide when not to allow abortions, there should be a federal standard too.

"We're talking about five-month-old babies, fully formed babies who can feel pain. No civilized country in the world allows elective abortion that late in pregnancy. I do not think the United States should be an exception," Vance said.

Vance went on to address the issue where a 10-year-old girl in Ohio was raped and had to travel out of state to get an abortion. Vance said he thinks the victim should have been able to get an abortion if she wanted.

However, Vance used this talking point to bring up the issue of illegal immigration.

"The thing the media and Congressman Ryan never mention ... is that poor girl was raped by an illegal alien, someone who had never been in this state in the first place," Vance said.

The next topic discussed was about attacks made by both candidates to one another including Ryan calling Vance a "silicon valley vulture capitalist."

Vance says Ryan's statement that he's an out-of-state Californian is wrong and that he was born and raised in Ohio and didn't leave until he enlisted in the United States Marine Corps at age 18.

"I went to Ohio State University, I started a business here, I raised my three small children here, and this is a ridiculous accusation from a guy who has never had to employ people and never created a single job," Vance said.

Ryan responded to this by claiming Vance makes money off of investing in China and accused Vance of having businesses in Ohio that hire foreign workers.

"[Vance is] funded by a Silicon Valley billionaire. He gave you $15 million to fund your primary, Mitch McConnell is giving you $40 million, all corporate money from the corporations who ship jobs overseas. Now you want to parachute into Ohio and try to buy a senate seat," Ryan said.

The next topic discussed was a claim reportedly made by Vance that President Biden was purposefully allowing fentanyl across the border to "target and kill MAGA voters."

Vance denies saying that Biden was intentionally killing people.

"What I said ... was [Biden's] rhetoric on how he views people who didn't vote for him is totally beyond the pale and totally unacceptable," Vance said.

Another comment made by Ryan brought up by Vance and the moderators was when Ryan said on MSNBC that Americans need to "kill and confront the extremist movement within the GOP." Moderators asked if this comment was meant to incite violence towards Republican voters.

Ryan says this comment was not about people, but a movement which Ryan describes as "extremist." Ryan accused Vance of being a part of this movement.

"Who says that the President is intentionally trying to kill people with fentanyl? Who says the election was stolen? J.D. Vance does. Who runs around with Ron DeSantis, who wants to ban books? You're running around with Lindsey Graham who wants a national abortion ban. You're running around with Marjorie Taylor Greene who is the absolute looniest politician in America," Ryan said.

The next topic was about the use of nukes in Ukraine. 

Ryan says he does not believe we're at the point where Vladimir Putin would use nuclear weapons, but we should have a "swift and significant response" if he does.

However, Vance says "nobody knows" how we should respond should Putin use nuclear weapons and criticized Ryan for this comment comparing it to the war in Iraq and Afghanistan.

"It reflects the failure of the bipartisan foreign policy establishment in our country. The same people who got us into Iraq and got us into Afghanistan for 20 years. ... What exactly does that mean? Does that mean we're in a nuclear shooting war," Vance said.

The next question asked was if America should defend Taiwan.

Ryan says America should defend Taiwan and supports investing into the National defense including investments into the ship repairs at a new Navy maintenance facility coming to Lordstown.

"We've got to have a strong military, we've got to have a strong defense because you never know what circumstances we're going to be in," Ryan said.

Vance says we need to get ourselves into a position where we don't need to rely on Taiwan and China for supplies like computer chips so we don't have to defend countries like Taiwan if it isn't in our national interest.

The next topic discussed was same sex marriage and the Marriage Equality Act. 

Vance says he is against this bill because he doesn't believe it is made simply to protect same sex marriage or equality and says he's not trying to overturn the constitutional right for LGBT+ people to get married.

"If you look at the specific bill being proposed, it wouldn't just codify something that's already enacted into law, it would actually make it easier for the government or a lot of private parties to sue religious organizations if those religious organizations do not comply with the dictates of the federal government," Vance said.

Vance says this legislation would release a "wave of litigation" against religious establishments in the country.

Ryan disagreed with Vance's comments on the bill and says the bill is solely meant to codify same sex marriage citing a section of the Supreme Court opinion to overturn Roe v. Wade hinting at a possible overturning of the Supreme Court ruling to legalize same sex marriage in all 50 states.

The next topic expanded to talk about marriage equality being a litmus test when evaluating a Supreme Court nominee. 

Vance says he does not like litmus tests on any Supreme Court nominees and is simply looking for good judges.

Ryan says he would have a litmus test on not only same sex marriage, but abortion and birth control as well.

"The Dobbs decision was the absolute first decision where the Supreme Court is taking rights away from people. It's not right," Ryan said.

The next topic discussed was immigration and a border wall.

Ryan says having a wall "from sea to shining sea" doesn't make any sense, but he would be for putting a barrier up to prevent people from coming over.

"El Chapo digs under that barrier as well, which is why I've always supported increased funding for border control, I've started the border technology caucus to figure out how we can use technology that we have in the United States to prevent this fentanyl from coming in," Ryan said.

Vance was then asked about a comment he previously made about only allowing immigrants in if they contribute "something meaningful" to the country.

Vance says skills, abilities and knowledge of the English language are all very important and criticized Ryan on not doing anything to address dangerous drugs being smuggled into the United States.

Ryan responded to this criticism by stating that he has a resolution to classify fentanyl as a "weapon of mass destruction" and brought up his previous points about the barrier.

The next topic brought up were the recent police shootings in Akron and Columbus respectively.

Moderators brought up comments Vance made on CNN in 2017 stating that there are "legitimate concerns" that Black Americans have about not being treated fairly by police officers.

Vance says he stands by these comments and says police are telling him they want to do more community policing and more engagement with people in the community.

"The problem is it's really hard to do that when you're 25 to 30 percent understaffed. So we've got to increase funding for law enforcement, we've got to protect law enforcement and we've got to do something that Tim Ryan failed to do, which is stop the leadership of this country from going after qualified immunity," Vance said.

Ryan says we need more police, better paid police and to "get rid of bad cops."

"I've brought back over $5 million for law enforcement here in Ohio. And when I get into the Senate I will continue to do that," Ryan said.

Moderators then asked what the biggest threat to our democracy is.

Ryan says he believes the extremism seen in the January 6 riots at the U.S. Capitol is the biggest threat as well as "guys that don't have the guts to stand up to their own party."

"I've run against Nancy Pelosi, I've taken on Bernie Sanders, I've opposed Joe Biden on numerous pieces of legislation that he wants to try to promote and push and I've agreed with Donald Trump on trade, renegotiating NAFTA, being firmer on China, defense, General Mattis being Secretary of Defense and all the rest," Ryan said.

Ryan accused Vance of not standing up against his party and addressed a comment made by Trump at a rally in Youngstown when he said "all you do is kiss my [expletive] to get my support" to Vance.

"That's bad because that means J.D. Vance is going to do whatever [Trump] wants," Ryan said.

Vance says the biggest threat to our democracy is the FBI censoring negative information about President Biden on social media.

"You cannot have a multinational corporation that's in bed with the Communist Chinese that's censoring information about one of America's political parties and doing it in a way that interferes with people's knowledge and ultimately people's votes," Vance said.

Vance was then asked if Trump has done anything that's concerned him. Vance says we should let the criminal investigations play out saying everything he saw were consistently rumors.

"I have seen nothing to suggest that the president of the United States should be thrown in prison. And most importantly here, if you're going to make accusations like this ... you've got to tell the American people why," Vance said.

Ryan was then asked if the people President Biden described as "MAGA Republicans" were a threat to democracy. 

Ryan responded by once again stating that those who stormed the Capitol and believe the 2020 election was stolen were threats to Democracy.

"If we lose the foundational element of this country, our vote, our elections, then we lose everything. And we got very close to that on January 6 when people wanted to kill Mike Pence and overthrow the peaceful transition," Ryan said.

After this, both candidates were asked if they would accept the results of the Senate race. Both candidates said yes.

During a rapid fire of questions, Ryan said he supports the decriminalization of Marijuana, but Vance believes it should be left to the individual states, but noted that nobody should be in prison "just for smoking a joint," but we shouldn't be soft on crime either.

Both candidates were asked who should be the Senate leader. Ryan says he'd vote for the person who would "give the absolute best deal to Ohio" and Vance did not give a specific answer, but says he definitely does not want Chuck Schumer as the Senate Leader.

Fianlly, Both candidates were asked if they believed in term limits at the federal level.

Vance says he does, but Ryan criticized Vance for comments he made about Youngstown being better off if Ryan "had to go back to Youngstown and work in the private sector [rather] than spend all of his time working in Washington D.C."

"I'm not going to apologize for spending 20 years of my adult life slogging away to try to help one of the hardest economically hit regions of Ohio and dedicated my life to help that region come back," Ryan said.

The two candidates will be facing off once again on Monday, October 17. You can tune into this debate on 21 WFMJ at 7:00 p.m.