A Letter To My Senator

Senator Lugar,

In my entire life, you are the only republican I have ever voted for. Despite my liberal leanings, I have always considered you a man of integrity and sound judgement. In fact, whenever I believe that congressional term limits are in order I also think, "Yeah, but then we would lose a guy like Dick Lugar." However, your "go along" stance with your party to filibuster a bill today that would have extended unemployment benefits to hundreds of thousands of people (like my dad) makes me feel physically ill to think that I could have ever cast a ballot in your favor.

You can rest assured that I will not do so again.

Thanks for nothing,

David E. Phillips

Sent to Senator Lugar today at 10:32PM through his website: http://lugar.senate.gov/

Response from Senator Lugar's office:

Dear Mr. Phillips:

Thank you for contacting me about the continuation of federal emergency unemployment benefits.

I support the continuation of this assistance program and am disappointed that Congress has to date been unable to come to a compromise to achieve this end. Emergency unemployment benefits have provided millions of Americans with a needed degree of financial security during this challenging economic time.

It is also imperative that legislation to continue unemployment benefits work toward sustainable economic growth and not against it. I do not believe that adding tens of billions of dollars to our national debt and increasing taxes on many small businesses for only a short term continuation of assistance programs represents a responsible pro-growth policy. As an alternative, I have voted to continue federal unemployment benefits and to pay for this additional spending with unused funds the government has already appropriated. Though this approach has received bipartisan support, this effort has been defeated on multiple occasions by Democratic Party leadership. Despite these failures to move a bill forward, I remain hopeful that differences can be resolved.

If you or friends or family are in need of assistance, please do not hesitate to contact my Indianapolis office at (317) 226-5555. While the continuation of federal emergency unemployment benefits is still under consideration, there are a number of other public assistance programs available. My staff has put together an assistance resource guide called "The Hoosier Connection," accessible at http://lugar.senate.gov/services/resources/, which provides information on some of these programs.

Thank you, again, for contacting me.
Sincerely, Richard G. Lugar United States Senator

My reply:

Not good enough. Not nearly. When did the senate become a place where the filibuster must be used on every single vote that does not reach the 60 vote super majority? 57 of your democratically elected colleagues are ready to vote for this. Your side talks about the will of the people, well the will of the people elected those 57 people. Why must 43% of the Senate hold up everything? Is this what you believe the senate was designed to do? Sorry Senator, but you can do better than this. I do appreciate the reply.

Sincerely,

David Phillips