Sen. Richard Lugar [R-IN]
U.S. Senator, Indiana
Track Record
Challenging Richard Mourdock [R] in the primary and Rep. Joe Donnelly [D] for Senate
Track Record
Challenging Richard Mourdock [R] in the primary and Rep. Joe Donnelly [D] for Senate
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| photo: Getty |
Although Lugar's party is in the minority in the Senate, he has good relationships with President Obama and Vice President Joe Biden. Lugar was named an honorary co-chairman of their inauguration.On the day of the final 2008 presidential debate, Lugar gave a speech at the National Defense University praising Obama's foreign policy approach, and warning against the isolationist, reactive policies espoused by Senator McCain. At that debate, Obama also listed Lugar as among the individuals "who have shaped my ideas and who will be surrounding me in the White House". There were rumors that either Obama or McCain would select Lugar to be Secretary of State, but that he preferred to keep his Senate seat.
On March 18, 2009, Lugar cast his 12,000th Senate vote, putting him in 13th place for all-time most votes. In 32 years in the Senate, he has a better than 98% attendance record. Senator Lugar has announced that he will run for reelection in 2012, and has an official campaign site.
During the August recess of 2005, Lugar and freshman Senator Barack Obama visited Russia, Azerbaijan, and Ukraine to inspect nuclear facilities there. He was detained for three hours at an airport in the city of Perm, near the Ural Mountains, where they were scheduled to depart for a meeting with the President and the Speaker of the House of Ukraine. He was released after a brief dialogue between U.S. and Russian officials, and the Russians later apologized for this incident. In January 2007, President Bush signed into law the Lugar-Obama Proliferation and Threat Reduction Initiative which was furthering Lugar's work with Senator Nunn in deactivating weapons in the former Soviet Union. The Lugar-Obama program focuses on terrorists and their use of multiple types of weapons. SOURCE
- Abortion is a woman's right - Opposes
- Require hiring more women & minorities - Opposes
- Same-sex domestic partnership benefits - Strongly Opposes
- Teacher-led prayer in public schools - Strongly Favors
- Death Penalty - Favors
- Mandatory Three Strikes sentencing laws - Strongly Favors
- Absolute right to gun ownership - Favors
- More federal funding for health coverage - Opposes
- Privatize Social Security - Strongly Favors
- Parents choose schools via vouchers - Strongly Favors
- Replace coal & oil with alternatives - Opposes
- Drug use is immoral: enforce laws against it - No Opinion
- Allow churches to provide welfare services - Favors
- Make taxes more progressive - Strongly Opposes
- Illegal immigrants earn citizenship - Favors
- Support & expand free trade - Strongly Favors
- Expand the armed forces - Strongly Favors
- Stricter limits on political campaign funds - Opposes
- The Patriot Act harms civil liberties - Strongly Opposes
- US out of Iraq & Afghanistan - Opposes
The Keystone XL Pipeline Controversy
Lugar, who sponsored legislation forcing Obama to issue a decision by Feb. 21, made the following remarks while visiting Endress+Hauser Instruments in Greenwood, a prospective supplier of instruments and gauges for the pipeline, which would stretch 1,700 miles from Canada to Port Arthur, Texas:
Why did the study need to be redone?“A majority of Americans support the pipeline. The studying time is done. The environmental concerns have been addressed. The job creation, economic and energy security arguments are overwhelmingly in favor of building it. The president opposing pipeline construction is not in the best interest of the United States. Ft. Wayne Journal Gazette
Answer: The other study was done by a group that had a conflict of interests.
Would our oil or gas be cheaper?
Answer: No, the price would actually go up.
Answer: No, the price would actually go up.
How would this benefit Indiana?
Answer: It wouldn't. Our prices would go up, Canada would benefit and some workers in other states would be employed.
Why is Dick Lugar spending so much time and energy on the Keystone XL Pipeline when it has no benefit for those that he represents in Indiana?
Answer: I don't know. Last summer he was doing tours of Indiana wind farms. He claimed that the wind farms could help bring energy independence to our country and put a lot of Hoosiers back to work. Indiana would benefit from wind farms but we will not benefit at all from the Keystone XL pipeline.
Lugar's Ad
The following is from IndyStar.com 1-17-2012
Lugar's ad begins airing today. It highlights his opposition to Obama on the 2009 economic stimulus bill, on the 2010 health-care overhaul and particularly on the current debate over whether to allow construction of an oil pipeline from Canada through the United States. The ad says Lugar wrote the law to stop Obama from killing the jobs that would be created if the Keystone Pipeline is built.
Update [SOURCE]
I don't know at this time what Richard Lugar has to do with this but I will continue to research it.
Think Progress reports that Indiana’s Washington D.C. representatives were paid with taxpayer dollars to lobby Congress during the fourth quarter of 2011 including “advocacy of the tar sands pipeline.” The Indiana Petroleum Council has pushed the Keystone XL pipeline even though it is unlikely that any Indiana residents will work on its construction. It is one thing to push the pipeline if it created jobs for Indiana residents and one would expect the state to actively lobby for any project to help the unemployed, but not only are there no jobs for Indiana residents, the pipeline does not even pass through Indiana. And yet Indiana taxpayer’s are funding the oil industry’s lobbying effort at a time when Governor Daniels and Republican state legislators have slashed spending for programs like Medicaid and most recently, full day kindergarten and the state fair. Apparently, for Daniels and Republicans in Indiana, it is better to spend tax dollars to enrich the oil industry than fund children’s health, higher education, and K-12 education that suffered Republican’s deep spending cuts.
The unlikely target of conservatives
Lugar’s courtliness and Midwestern aversion to rhetorical flamboyance do not match this moment of fevered politics. So this race will take the temperature of a fundamentally temperate state that Obama carried in 2008 by a wafer-thin margin (28,391 votes). In what may be Lugar’s principal vulnerability, some Hoosiers think that with his many foreign policy interests — he has been, and could again be, chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee — he has neglected Indiana: The day Mourdock announced his challenge, a large majority of the 92 Republican county chairmen endorsed him. READ THE ARTICLE
SOURCE Line up: (left to right) Senate Foreign Relations
Committe Chairman John Kerry, President Hu,
Harry Reid, the Senate Foreign Relations Committee
ranking Republican Richard Lugar and John McCain