Mike Kelly (Pennsylvania politician)
George Joseph "Mike" Kelly Jr. (born May 10, 1948) is an American politician and businessman who has been a U.S. representative since 2011, currently representing . The district, numbered as the 3rd district from 2011 to 2019, is based in Erie and stretches from the northwest corner of the state to the outer northern suburbs of Pittsburgh. A member of the Republican Party, Kelly is known for his support of Donald Trump, characterizing the 2019 effort to impeach Trump as akin to Pearl Harbor and filing a lawsuit in state court to invalidate all mail-in ballots cast in Pennsylvania during the 2020 United States presidential election. On October 22, 2021, it was reported that a congressional ethics watchdog had recommended subpoenaing Kelly for an ethics violation after it was revealed that his wife had purchased stock in an Ohio-based steel company in April 2020 after Kelly had received confidential information about the company. In June 2022, Senator Ron Johnson revealed that Kelly was responsible for providing a slate of fake electors meant to overturn Pennsylvania's electoral votes in the 2020 election. Kelly's office has denied his role in this event. Education and early career Kelly was born on May 10, 1948, in Pittsburgh, but has spent most of his life in the outer northern suburb of Butler. He attended the University of Notre Dame. Automotive business After college, Kelly worked for his father's Chevrolet/Cadillac car dealership. In 1995, he took over the business, and added Hyundai and KIA to its lineup. In March 2019, a local TV station discovered that 17 vehicles were for sale on Kelly's Uniontown and Butler lots that were the subject of recall notices but had not been repaired. The station contacted both the businesses and Kelly's office without receiving responses. A month later, a reporter found three of those vehicles with active recalls still for sale. In November 2015, Kelly had spoken on the floor of Congress in support of a bill that would have allowed dealers to loan or rent vehicles despite National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) safety recall notices on them. Kelly had said, "There is not a single person in our business that would ever put one of our owners in a defective car or a car with a recall. But that could happen. That could happen." The bill did not pass. Kelly's car dealerships received Paycheck Protection Program loans of between $450,000 and $1.05 million to keep staff on the payroll during the coronavirus pandemic. Paycheck Protection Programs loans saved over 160 jobs at Kelly's family-owned dealerships. The loans were designed to keep employees on payroll during the COVID-19. Former Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Wolf deemed automobile dealerships "non-essential" during the pandemic, which forced Kelly's dealerships to close and allowed the dealerships to accept PPP loans. United States House of Representatives Committees & Caucuses Kelly is a top Republican on the powerful and influential U.S. House of Representatives' Ways & Means Committee. He currently chairs the Subcommittee on Tax, which oversees