JOSH CLAIMS: Brown Has Missed More Than Half of the Committee Hearings He Was Supposed To Attend This Year.

THE TRUTH: Brown Has Attended Nearly Three-Fourths of Committee Meetings And Nearly All Misses Are Due To Other Senate Business.

1. Brown serves on five committees and presides over the Senate weekly. Committee hearings are often double-booked or other scheduling conflicts—like presiding over the Senate or meeting with constituents— prevent him from attending. [Plain Dealer, 1/10/12]

2. Brown Either Attended or Was Involved in Official Senate Business for 60 out of 82 Committee Hearings or over 72%. [U.S. Senate, Government Printing Office, CQ]

3. Brown Spent His First Years in the Senate Listening and Learning About Issues that Affect Ohioans, Not Waging Partisan Rhetorical Warfare. [Columbus Dispatch, 12/23/07]

Plain Dealer: Attending All Committee Meetings Is Doubtful, Maybe Impossible. In January 2012, The Plain Dealer reported, “They also attend oversight committee hearings, and Brown is on five committees: Agriculture, Appropriations, Banking, Ethics, and Veterans Affairs. Has he made it to every meeting? That’s doubtful. It might be impossible, in fact, because if Ethics is meeting at the same time as, say, an Agriculture subcommittee, one of them has to give.” [Plain Dealer, 1/10/12]

Sherrod Brown Either Attended Or Was Involved In Official Senate Business For 73.2% Of All Committee Hearings (60 of 82) In 2012. [Official Committee Websites, Government Printing Office, CQ]

“Brown Didn’t Spend His First Year In The Senate Waging Rhetorical War On Bush And Republicans.”  In December 2007, The Columbus Dispatch wrote “Brown didn’t spend his first year in the Senate waging rhetorical war on Bush and Republicans. The man who for more than a dozen years represented an urban/suburban House district in northeast Ohio near Cleveland tackled his Agriculture Committee assignment — he is the first Ohio senator in 40 years on the panel — with vigor.”  [Columbus Dispatch, 12/23/07]