Chocola: “Hoosiers Can and Should Call Senator Lugar a Good Man, But They Can't Reasonably Call Him Conservative”

Former Hoosier Congressman and Club for Growth President Chris Chocola rips Dick Lugar in a letter to the Indianapolis Star:

New York City Deputy Mayor Stephen Goldsmith and David Gogol, a former staffer for Sen. Richard Lugar, bizarrely and inaccurately defend Lugar's vote in favor of the 1978 bailout of New York City as an act of "fiscal conservatism and leadership" (My View, July 20).

They're wrong. A simple review of Lugar's record does not reveal a conservative.

The Club for Growth recently ran television advertisements in Indiana urging Hoosiers to tell Lugar to stop his big-spending, pro-bailout ways. Our ad, the impetus for the op-ed by Goldsmith and Gogol, states: "Lugar voted for the Wall Street bailout, the car company bailouts, the Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac bailout. Back in the 1970s, he even voted to bail out New York City. Now, with $14 trillion in debt, Lugar will soon vote on raising our debt limit even higher. After 35long years, tell Richard Lugar: no more debt."

Gogol and Goldsmith don't dispute any of this. They simply argue that the New York bailout was the right thing to do.

Gogol and Goldsmith argue that it would have been bad for Lugar to vote "against a bad bill that would have passed." That should tell you all you need to know about Washington. Lugar could easily make the same argument about his votes for the Wall Street Bailout, or the Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac bailout. Such an argument is not comforting to thousands of Hoosiers whose tax dollars were used to salvage the big Wall Street banks.

The fact is that over his 35 years in Washington, Lugar has consistently voted for more spending, federal bailouts and more debt.

In 1979, Lugar voted to bail out Chrysler with $1.5 billion in federal loan guarantees. In 1982, he voted to increase the gasoline tax. In 1983, Lugar voted to increase Social Security taxes. In 1984, he voted against a 10-percent cut in the federal budget.

In 1995, Lugar voted against a work requirement for welfare recipients. In 1998, he voted against a $195.5 billion-dollar income tax cut. The list goes on and on.

In 2005, Lugar voted to keep the infamous "Bridge to Nowhere" in Alaska. He voted for a Democratic "cap-and-trade" scheme in 2003. In 2007, Lugar even voted against the view that Congress has a "moral obligation" to reduce deficit spending. More recently, he opposed the Republican Senate conference decision to ban so-called "earmarks," or the pork projects of lawmakers that have added to our red ink.

As Lugar runs for re-election, his surrogates should be careful not to distort his record lest they hurt their own credibility. After 35 years, Hoosiers can and should call Senator Lugar a good man, but they can't reasonably call him conservative.