Baron's Latest Big Spins on Spending & Values

From the Seymour Tribune comes this prime example of how the media in the 9th District merely repeats what Baron Hill says without ever investigating the facts.

The article goes on at length about how Baron Hill is a centrist.

It even quotes him talking about examples of how he is so moderate.

The problem, of course, is that the things that Baron is citing as examples of his centrism are anything but, and (in the case of his abortion example) they are manifestly untrue.

"I'm a centrist," Hill said over the weekend, returning home to the district. "I'm not an ideologue. Centrists are problem solvers, and you don't solve problems by working at one extreme or the other. The only way you can do that is by reaching out."

To this, I merely give two topical and pithy quotations:

"Those who stand for nothing, fall for anything."
- Alexander Hamilton

"Bipartisan usually means that a larger-than-usual deception is being carried out."
- George Carlin

Baron is a picture-perfect example of someone that will say anything and do anything.

And what he does almost always has no relationship whatsoever to what he does.

It doesn't matter if you are a liberal, or a conservative.

Baron Hill will tell you whatever you want to hear at any given moment, and then he will go to Washington and vote some other way that is completely the opposite of what he told you.

Southern Indiana doesn't need an ideologue in Congress, but it also doesn't need someone who engages in typical political double-speak.

We need someone who says what he means, and means what he says, even if what he says is something that we might not always agree with.

When Mike Sodrel, Eric Schansberg, and Gretchen Clearwater tell you something, you can take their words to the bank.

They mean what they say, they believe what they say, and they will tell the exact same thing to someone else tomorrow.

Baron Hill is none of that; he never says what he means, he never believes what he says, and he'll tell someone else tomorrow the exact opposite of what he told you today.

Everybody knows this about Baron Hill, even the most ardent of 9th District Democrats.

Baron's never said a word of straight talk in his entire life.

In fact, he has said as much:

Hill said he's proud of the moderate votes he's cast, including those on fuel standards that he said were far less than what liberals called for and than conservatives wanted.

As I pointed out last year, Baron found religion on fuel standards too late.

He had a chance in 2001 to vote for increased fuel economy standards for cars, and he voted against them.

Fuel economy standards take many, many years to have an impact.

A vote by Baron on fuel economy standards now won't help Hoosier drivers for years.

A vote by Baron on fuel economy standards in 2001 would have been helping Hoosier drivers right now.

And, as I pointed out yesterday, there seems to be a pretty strong match between Baron Hill being in office and the price of gasoline going through the roof.

He also pointed to a vote last week in which he broke with the Democratic leadership on the budget bill.

"I voted just Thursday against the budget bill because it was spending too much and relying on Social Security to fund it," Hill said. "That's not a liberal vote. That's a centrist vote."

The budget vote happens to be an utterly meaningless vote.

Budgets, as I noted at the time Baron made the vote, are like blueprints.

Appropriations bills--spending bills--are where the structure is actually built.

Baron always votes against the blueprints.

But then he always turns around and votes to build the very structure laid out by those blueprints.

His votes on the budget are made meaningless by his votes for the spending bills.

"Mike Sodrel's record doesn't fit the district at all," Hill said. "They want someone who's a moderate. They don't want someone on either extreme, even on social issues.

"On abortion, I think parents should have the right to know their children are going to have an abortion, and I don't think federal money should be used to fund abortions. That's a moderate view.

"I don't agree with the liberal extreme view that says parents don't have the right to know and that would spend federal money on abortions," Hill said. "And I don't believe in the conservative extreme view that there shouldn't be abortion, period."

First of all, I thought Baron Hill wanted to avoid making this a negative campaign.

Yet here he goes, making negative attacks on Mike Sodrel and Mike Sodrel's record.

Another perfect example of Baron saying one thing, and then doing something else.

Second of all, what Baron is saying here about abortion is a lie.

It has absolutely nothing to do with the facts about his voting record on abortion since he returned to Congress.

Baron Hill has voted twice to continue Federal funding for Planned Parenthood, an organization that provides about a quarter of a million abortions each year.

This Federal funding has gone on for a long time under both Republicans and Democrats, and pro-life groups have started lobbying to eliminate it.

But when Congressman Mike Pence offered legislation to eliminate that funding, Baron Hill voted to keep giving tax dollars to Planned Parenthood.

Baron does not genuinely believe that Federal dollars should not be spent to fund abortions.

If he did, he would not have voted to continue Federal funding of the largest abortion provider in America.

This was a vote, by the way, that earned Baron Hill a thank-you note from Planned Parenthood.

Baron Hill has also voted twice to gut the Mexico City Policy, which prohibits Federal aid money from going to fund abortions.

That vote earned him a condemnation from Indiana Right to Life.

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So there you have it, folks.

The same old negative attacks, double-talk, and untruths from Baron Hill as usual.

It doesn't matter if it's fuel economy standards, the budget, or even a life-and-death issue such as abortion, Baron can only be relied upon to tell us one thing and then go and do another.