When challenged about his comments comparing the actions of US troops to Nazis, Senator Dick Durbin always defends himself by stating that he immediately apologized. This, however, is a disingenuous argument. The record shows that he refused to apologize initially, and only did so after public pressure and pressure from other Democrats like Chicago's Mayor Daley.
Three days after the comments, on June 17, 2005, Durbin went on Chicago talk radio, speaking with WGN, 720 AM. The interviewer asked Durbin, "No regrets on the comments you made?" Durbin responded by boldly stating, "No, I don't...I said if I just read this to you and you didn't know where it came from, where would you think this could happen? In the Nazi regime, in the Soviet regime? Sadly it happened under Americans."
Durbin continued to insist that he had no regrets for several days, and he now tries to hide this complete lack of judgment. For a full recap on this story, read Hugh Hewitt's analysis from June 2005.
In a Chicago Tribune opinion piece by Dennis Byrne, he rightly questions why so many people assume that Dick Durbin's re-election is considered a cinch, especially given that "the public's loathing of Congress is soaring and Dick Durbin is an architect of that body's many disorders."
Byrne goes on to argue:
"One can find many reasons why Durbin shouldn't be re-elected and his Republican rival Steve Sauerberg deserves a closer look: Durbin's grinding partisanship, among the worst in the Senate, according to washingtonpost.com; the millions he has raised from clout-heavy, legal, securities, investment and real estate interests, according to OpenSecrets.org; his craven about-face on abortion; his unabashed love of earmarks. True, some voters might support Durbin for those reasons. But when measured by the Democratic mantra—the willingness or ability to change things—Durbin flunks."
The Tribune piece concludes by making an argument similar to the one Dr. Steve Sauerberg has been making throughout his campaign. "If the fairy godmother showed up tomorrow and granted Obama a wish, and Obama were true to his promise of change, Durbin and Emanuel would immediately disappear like Cinderella's carriage and turn into a pumpkin."
The American people’s disgust with this Durbin-led, Democrat-controlled Congress is shown again in a recent Gallup poll. Just 12% of the country expressed confidence in Congress, with just 6% of those polled holding a “great deal” of confidence.
This is the lowest confidence that any institution has ever received in the history of the poll. Senator Dick Durbin’s rise to the number two spot in the Senate appears to be inversely related to the people’s satisfaction with Congress. As he has risen to power, the American public’s opinion of Congress has declined.
After two years of doing absolutely nothing, the public is fed up with the Democrat-controlled Congress. When the American public has very little confidence in elected officials like Durbin, it is time for those who control this Congress to move on.
In an 8/4/08 Wall Street Journal editorial, reposted at the Illinois GOP website, Obama's plan to "take 'a reasonable share' of oil company profits" is analyzed.
The problem with Obama's plan is that he "didn't bother to define 'reasonable,' and neither did Dick Durbin, the second-ranking Senate Democrat, when he recently declared that 'The oil companies need to know that there is a limit on how much profit they can take in this economy.' Really? This extraordinary redefinition of free-market success could use some parsing."
In looking at the taxes already paid, take Exxon Mobil. The editorial points out that "between 2003 and 2007, Exxon paid $64.7 billion in U.S. taxes, exceeding its after-tax U.S. earnings by more than $19 billion. That sounds like a government windfall to us, but perhaps we're missing some Obama-Durbin business subtlety."
For the Wall Street Journal's full analysis, click here.
Now that August has begun, Dick Durbin and the Do-Nothing Democrats have taken off for a five-week vacation. This is in spite of the fact that they have passed no legislation to help solve our energy crisis and have seemingly taken no action on any important issue since the Democrats took over the majority of Congress.
The situation is completely unchanged from a year ago, when Durbin admitted in a 12/5/07 speech on the Senate floor that the Democrat-controlled Congress was accomplishing absolutely nothing.
In the above clip, Durbin asks "Shouldn't we earn our paycheck today by doing something?" The question applies to today's Congress more than ever. Durbin knows that he and the Democratic majority he leads are failing the people of this nation.
All evidence now reveals that the judgment of Democrats like Dick Durbin and Harry Reid was wrong and clouded by politics. An analysis by the Associated Press states "the United States is now winning the war that two years ago seemed lost."
This news likely comes as a disappointment to defeatists like Durbin and Reid who had hoped for a loss in Iraq in order to gain a political advantage.
On 4/19/07, less than 60 days after the surge was announced and more than 100 days before it was fully implemented, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid declared, "This war is lost, and this surge is not accomplishing anything."
On 9/7/07, prior to a progress report from General Petreaus, Senate Majority Whip Dick Durbin similarly declared "the Bush surge is not working."
But now after one year of the surge, Durbin and Reid have been proven wrong. It turns out that our faith in the greatest military in the world was justified after all.
After years of opposing domestic drilling, Senator Dick Durbin has finally realized that the Republican party has been right all along.
In an October 18, 2005 speech on the Senate floor, Durbin said "There is no way we can find energy independence by drilling." Similarly on May 2, 2006, Durbin said "we cannot drill our way out of this problem. But time and again, that is what the Republicans suggest is the answer." He went on to complain about rising energy prices, blaming those in charge for not doing enough to stop it. "Honestly, when you take a look at this failure of leadership, you can understand why people across America are calling for a change in direction."
In a May 8, 2008 speech on the Senate floor, Durbin reiterated his stance against drilling. "What do the Republicans offer in return? Drilling, drilling, drilling...We cannot drill our way out of this situation."
Two months later, on July 9, 2008, in the face of vast popular support for domestic drilling, Durbin changed his position in a newspaper interview, saying "I'm open to drilling and responsible production."
As energy prices have risen more sharply than ever (since the Democrats gained control of Congress, gas prices have risen 77%, from an average of $2.32 to $4.11), the Democrats in Congress have yet to propose any coherent energy plan beyond suing oil companies and OPEC. With Durbin's failure of leadership and failure to make up his mind about what he believes on energy, just as he said two years ago, "you can understand why people across America are calling for a change in direction."
The leaders of Congress, Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid, and Dick Durbin, have steered Congress to its lowest rating in the history of Rasmussen's polling.
In the poll released by Rasmussen last week , "just 9% say Congress is doing a good or excellent job. Most voters (52%) say Congress is doing a poor job, which ties the record high in that dubious category."
Even the ratings from fellow Democrats have hit historic lows, with just 13% giving the Democrat-controlled Congress positive ratings. Independents are even more dissatisfied, with just 3% of the nation giving Congress a positive rating.
During a town hall in Ohio on energy, Barack Obama said that “the only problem is that out of those thirty years, Senator McCain was in Washington for twenty-six of them. And in that time he has achieved little to help reduce our dependence on foreign oil.”
Obama's words describe Dick Durbin precisely. Unlike McCain, who has presented a specific plan to reduce energy costs, during Durbin's twenty-five years in Washington, the Illinois Senator's only response to rising energy costs has been to hold press conferences. For more on Durbin's history of addressing real problems with empty words in press conferences, click here.
Senator Durbin and his Democratic colleagues holding a press conference in front of the gas station across from Union Station in DC on 4-26-06, months before the Democrats won control of Congress.
The same DC gas station with a very different price on 7-9-08 after two years of the Democrats controlling Congress.
Two years ago in a speech to the Roosevelt Institution, Senator Dick Durbin spent time mocking flag burning. He scoffed at the notion of amending the Constitution to ban flag burning, pointing out that this nation's founders did not include the ban in the Constitution.
Durbin's lack of patriotism is astounding enough, but even more shocking is his claim that the Founding Fathers would not have cared either. The founders did not include a ban on flag burning in the Constitution because they never had to deal with ultra-liberal Americans who hate their own country. They also never anticipated an activist Supreme Court that would extend the freedom of speech to cover action, somehow classifying the physical act of flag burning as political "speech."
It is one thing for Durbin to not support the amendment, but his ridicule of those who care about this country is inexcusable. Listen to the excerpt from the speech below.
Senator Dick Durbin appears to be in favor of rewriting Illinois's Constitution, something that has been proposed to, among other things, allow Illinois to recall elected officials.
In a recent interview with Chicago Public Radio, Durbin expressed his view that rewriting the Constitution could be "what breaks some of the gridlock we've seen in our state capital." Does this mean that Durbin would support permitting the recall of public officials, an idea that has often been targeted at his friend Governor Blagojevich?
What Durbin has not figured out is that that the political bickering in Springfield is entirely amongst the Democrats. And even with his position of power, Durbin has done nothing to stop his party's infighting beyond sending his usual letters. Illinois doesn't need to change the Constitution to solve its problems; it just needs to change the people who represent the state, like Dick Durbin.
Click here for the full story from Chicago Public Radio.
As proof that Senator Durbin does not even try to represent his constituents, the Heritage Foundation highlights Durbin's attempt to rush an omnibus spending bill through the Senate, in spite of the fact that the Senate had less than two days to read through the 3,417-page bill.
The 34 pound document "contained approximately 9,800 special-interest earmarks," including a "$3.7 million earmark that says only 'Formosan Subterranean Termite, New Orleans, LA.' One assumes, although it is not...specified, that the earmark is intended for humans to combat the termite, rather than as a grant to the termites themselves."
When Senator Jim DeMint (R-SC) asked for more time to fully understand the bill, Durbin snapped on him, citing the availability of the bill on the internet as offering adequate chance to read it. Apparently Durbin has mastered the art of speed reading, as "the Durbin Speed Reading standard required senators to read and comprehend 1.25 pages per minute, non-stop, for 2,768 minutes. To read nothing but the earmarks would require reading nearly 200 pages per hour. No time for sleep, meals, stretching, not even a bathroom break." And this is how the second most powerful Democrat in the Senate treats his colleagues and his job.
Click here for the full Heritage Foundation article.
When Dick Durbin first came to Congress in 1983, he was adamantly pro-life. That position has since changed, as Durbin admits that he allowed Washington to change his stance on abortion.
Durbin's pandering to the liberal wing of his party reveals much about his true motivation for being in Congress. Rather than having conviction in his beliefs, Durbin has been happy to change his position in order to rise in the ranks of the Democratic Party. Once again, Dick Durbin has chosen the pursuit of personal prestige and power over fighting for his true beliefs and representing the interests of Illinois.
For full details on Durbin's former pro-life stance, see the National Right to Life's section on Durbin's Abortion Papers.
Despite his whining about lottery tickets and other people's wealth, it turns out that Senator Dick Durbin is a millionaire after all.
According to the Daily Herald, "after finding that his recently filed financial disclosure documents failed to list a retirement savings account that is one of his largest personal assets, he's updating the forms -- a move that will officially restore him to millionaire status."
While he has criticized his opponents for having money over the years, Durbin's "aides say [his net worth] is closer to $1.3 million." For the full story from the Daily Herald, click here.
"Today, the American Conservative Union is launching a nationwide effort to force the Liberal Congress to COME CLEAN!
To help start this effort, ACU is launching a video located on the new ACU: Come Clean web page. In this first assault, the ACU urges Liberal Congress to Come Clean on Energy. This video exposes Liberals for who they really are.
We are not going to sit idly and let Liberals direct the course of this nation.
Senator Dick Durbin has conducted countless press conferences standing in front of gas stations, where he rails against high gas prices. He always talks about how much gas prices have risen during the Bush presidency, but consistently overlooks the rise that has occurred during his 25 years in Washington.
Durbin's solution to high gas prices? First, he wants to offend and infuriate OPEC, the suppliers of a large portion of our oil, by engaging in frivolous, unnecessary lawsuits against them. Second, he wants to raise taxes on domestic oil companies, a method that ignores basic economics as the rise in taxes will be passed along to the consumers in the form of even higher gas prices.
"In a 2007 report by the Election Assistance Commission, less than 50 percent of the nearly one million absentee ballots submitted by military voters were actually counted in the 2006 elections." Carissa Picard, president of Military Spouses for Change
This shocking statistic is finally being addressed by Congress, as Rep. McCarthy (R-CA) in the House (H.R.5673) and Sen. Cornyn (R-TX) in the Senate (S.3073) introduced companion forms of the Military Voter Protection Act.
Once again, Senator Durbin has chosen to abdicate his responsibility to this nation's service men and women by avoiding this issue completely. Durbin's consistent failure to respect our troops is further proof that it is time for him to move on.
To learn more about the Military Voter Protection Act, go to the House version or the Senate version for more on the bill itself, or read Picard's full article by clicking here.
