LoBiondo's No Moderate

I was startled to see an Oct. 8 story that described U.S. Rep. Frank LoBiondo as a Republican “moderate.” Huh? Any time our 2nd District congressman has put a feeler out among state Republicans about his interest in seeking a statewide office, the media have described him as too right-wing to be elected in our moderate state. LoBiondo's voting record seems on most issues to substantiate the view that he is not a moderate Republican. Elected as a “Contract with America,” balance-the-budget, fiscal conservative, he has abandoned any pretense of supporting fiscal restraint. His vote for the pork-laden highway bill is the latest example. And he has embraced the “voodoo economics” of the neoconservatives.LoBiondo's record on the war is equally fiscally irresponsible. He has supported the failure of the Bush administration to ask for any sacrifice from the American people and continues to push for even more tax breaks for the super rich. While both moderate Republicans and true fiscal conservatives have more and more come to question the war's cost, LoBiondo continues to be an ardent supporter and defender of the Bush war policies.The Press article describing LoBiondo as a moderate was in reference to his support for an investigation into the awarding of various contracts after the storms in the Gulf Coast — a position he acknowledges will never make the House floor. On investigations that have made the floor, he has repeatedly voted against any kind of independent investigation into the Bush administration transgressions. Alexis de Tocqueville warned, “The American republic will endure until the day Congress discovers that it can bribe the public with the public's money.” Hopefully, the extreme fiscal and moral irresponsibility of LoBiondo will be rejected by the voters of the 2nd District in 2006.

LARRY ANGEL

Mullica Township

Letter printed in Press of Atlantic City, October 17, 2005

http://www.pressofatlanticcity.com/opinion/letters/story/5624720p-5638656c.html