New Haven Independent

Lieberman spoke at SCSU Friday on a campaign stop as he pursues a third-party reelection bid against Democratic nominee Ned Lamont.

As the race focuses on the middle class, Lieberman revealed four higher education proposals to defray rising tuition costs. Private tuition in Connecticut has gone up 22 percent, and state tuition costs have gone up 32 percent, in the past five years, he said.

He’d triple the $4,000 tax deduction for college tuition; support a refundable tax credit for low- and middle-income families; and raise the cap on federal Pell Grants from $4,000 to $11,600. He’d also support setting a national formula for student loan borrowers so that their loan payments would correlate with how much money they’re making after college.

Lamont released an education proposal in September, calling for universal pre-K, after-school programing and college affordability. Click here to read it.

A Contradiction?

Students welcomed Lieberman’s proposed tuition relief. They also challenged the three-term senator.

Heating up the conversation in a post-speech Q & A, student Rich Neagle (at center in back) asked if Lieberman’s avowed support of the middle class and higher ed didn’t run “cross-purpose with your support, on the other hand, of some extraordinarily expensive overseas adventures, such as the war in Iraq.”

“If you don’t have security in this country, then everything else that we fight for is not going to be worth very much,” responded Lieberman. Despite a recent National Intelligence Estimate that concluded the Iraq war has made the world less safe from terror, the senator restated his claim that “overthrowing Saddam Hussein was an important part of maintaining American security.”

But he gave a new answer to the argument the Lamont camp has posed for so long — that pouring billions of dollars into the Iraq war undermines commitment to domestic priorities. Lieberman rejected the notion that the two run at “cross-purposes.”

“The truth is, we are an enormously wealthy country, and we could do both if we wanted to.” Lieberman said his education initiatives could be funded by repealing Bush’s tax cuts for the wealthy.

From Freedom Rider to Torture Apologist?

Student Kevin Miner, who said he’d voted for Lieberman twice in 2000, said one question had been eating him up for a long time: “I want to know what the moral reasoning is from a man who went from being a freedom rider to a torture apologist. I want to know what happened.”

The crowd — dozens of students joined by a lot of faculty and staff — applauded the question.

“I’m not a torture apologist,” said Lieberman, citing “outrage” at absence of due process for detainees at Guantanamo Bay. Then he went on to explain why he was one of only 12 Democratic senators to support a recent detainee bill. The bill prohibits some of the worst abuses of detainees, but many Democrats say it gives the president too much room to decide which other interrogation techniques are permissible and allow inhumane treatment of suspects.

Echoing Republican arguments, Lieberman told the student: “We’re at war. It’s hard for a lot of people to understand this, because it’s a different kind of war.” The people we are capturing are “enemy combatants,” and in many countries are given fewer rights than prisoners of war. “We are now giving them more rights than prisoners of war get in most countries of war.”

“I know it’s fashionable to say what you’re saying,” Lieberman told the student. But “these are people who people working for us suspect of wanting to kill us. All of us! Any one of us! And it doesn’t mean that they aren’t human beings … But they don’t deserve the same rights that citizens of the United States do.” The comment garnered a smattering of applause.

Post-Primary Relief?

Lieberman, whose candidacy has been boosted by national GOP support, was also challenged on how much he’s doing to support the Democratic Party’s attempts to gain a majority in Congress. Since Lieberman’s support is strongest among Republican voters, Democrats fear that he’ll jeopardize several Democrats’ Congressional campaigns in close races by drawing more GOP voters to the polls.

“How important is it to you that the Democrats retake control of the House and Senate?” asked one student, alluding presumably to Lieberman’s decision not to support the three Democratic candidates in hot state congressional races. The three incumbent Republican congressmen have officially backed or otherwise praised Lieberman.

Lieberman didn’t say he’d help Democratic congressional candidates in Connecticut win. Instead, he said his best hope is “working as hard as I can to, to get elected,” then “organize with Democrats” once elected.

Continuing to use his third-party political standing as a vantage point from which to decry “partisan politics,” Lieberman sounded almost relieved to have lost the primary.

When one man voiced frustration that “goverment doesn’t support the people,” Lieberman blamed that frustration on partisanship in congress. “Maybe, although it was painful to lose the primary, maybe it gives me an opportunity that I wouldn’t have had otherwise to express the same frustration to people.”

Self-Financing
Lieberman has been condemning Lamont for spending $6.7 million of his own money to “buy his Senate seat” yet recently announced he’ll be campaigning with New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg, a man who pumped ten times as much — over $66 million — into his reelection campaign in 2005. Bloomberg is hosting a Nov. 1 fund-raiser for Lieberman. Does Lieberman see that as a contradiction?

Asked if Bloomberg’s self-financing efforts were “wrong,” he said “no.”

“I’m not saying that anybody with money doesn’t have the right, under the law, to spend it and move themselves forward for office,” said Lieberman.

“My major argument against Lamont is not that he’s spending already $7 million of his own money, it’s that he has no experience.”

On the other hand, the Lieberman campaign’s official blog, “The Full Lamonty,” ridicules Lamont as “Neddie Warbucks” and posts a thermometer to record, and criticize, Lamont for putting money into his campaign.